Thomas Breen photo
Rosa DeLauro at Friday’s press conference in the Hill.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s visit to New Haven on Friday was about more than just the recently passed $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.
It was also a clear recognition and honoring of the woman who played an outsized role in making that federal pandemic relief bill a reality: the city’s longtime congresswoman, Rosa DeLauro.
Harris visited the Boys & Girls Club on Columbus Avenue in the Hill and the West Haven Child Development Center Friday afternoon as part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s “Help Is Here” campaign to tout the new administration’s early legislative feat.
At the presser, before VP Harris arrived in New Haven.
As the new chair of the House Appropriations Committee and as a decades’ long proponent of an expanded child tax credit, DeLauro successfully included in the final legislation various provisions that significantly boost direct financial aid for children and families.
Those include increasing the child tax credit, from $2,000 per child to $3,600 per child under age 6, and $3,000 for other children under age 18; making the benefit fully refundable, so that low-income families who do not file taxes are eligible for the first time; and sending out credit amounts as advance payments starting on July 1.
The American Rescue Plan also includes, among many other pots of money, more than $50 billion in childcare relief funding, in the form of expanded Child Care and Development Block grants and a separate stabilization fund for childcare providers.
Sens. Murphy (center) and Blumenthal, praising New Haven’s Congresswoman.
During a Friday afternoon press conference at the corner of Columbus Avenue and Howard Avenue outside of Roberto Clemente Academy, U.S. Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal recognized DeLauro as uniquely responsible for those child-centered portions of the American Rescue Plan, and for inspiring Vice President Harris’s visit to DeLauro’s home city.
“I don’t think there’s any secret as to why we’re getting a little bit of extra attention,” Murphy said with a smile. “It’s pretty good to have the Appropriations Chairwoman be from New Haven.”
Blumenthal agreed. “This day is a real milestone. It’s historic. We’re welcoming the vice president and celebrating the American Rescue Act. But we’re also celebrating the triumph of an idea: the child tax credit. An idea that Rosa DeLauro has championed as a voice and a vote through years and years, and now brought to this point where it will lift out of poverty half the children” in this country.
“That is a historic accomplishment. And it shows that government can work.”
During her time at the mic, DeLauro focused less on her legislative work that almost certainly inspired Harris to visit New Haven, and more on the material impact that the American Rescue Plan will have on poor, working-class, and middle-class Americans.
She zeroed in on the $50 billion to stabilize the childcare industry.
“Women have been the victims,” DeLauro said. “They’re not opting out of the workforce. They’re being pushed out of the workforce” during the Covid-19 pandemic. “Five million women lost their jobs. The major reason is lack of childcare.”
While the expanded child tax credit included in the American Rescue Plan is only in place for one year, DeLauro said she’s committed to trying to make this expanded benefit a permanent one.
Harris’s visit came on the same day that Gov. Ned Lamont announced that the state would be spending $210 million in recent federal funding to the state on early childhood programs. Those include a two-year, $50 million investment to pay for childcare through Connecticut’s Care 4 Kids program and $120 million for “operational stabilization” grants for childcare businesses hit hard by the pandemic.
DeLauro credited Harris’s visit to New Haven as “recognizing the State of Connecticut, a recognition that [Harris and President Biden] know what is happening here, what we are doing.”
“Please Tell Rosa I Love Her”
VP Harris, on her way down Howard Avenue.
Murphy and Blumenthal weren’t the only national politicians praising DeLauro on Friday for her influential role in crafting parts of the American Rescue Plan.
Vice President Harris herself singled out the congresswoman during a speech she gave at the West Haven Child Development Center.
Below is a transcription of that portion of Harris’s speech in which the vice president spoke about DeLauro on Friday:
I want to talk about Rosa DeLauro for a second.
So you mentioned our meeting in the Oval Office with the President when we were crafting the American Rescue Plan.
And there was a handful of members of the House that were a part of that meeting — and for the various components of the American Rescue Plan, they were there because of their longstanding leadership.
And I think Connecticut knows, and I don’t have to tell you, what a jewel you have in Rosa DeLauro.
She has been singularly and tirelessly — singularly, with a lot of people because also no one says “no” to her — been fighting for this — been fighting for it.
I was in the Oval Office with the President this morning before I came here, and he said — as I was walking out, I said, “I’m heading to Connecticut.” He said, “Please tell Rosa I love her.”
That’s what he said. He said, “Please tell her I love her.”
And — and so in front of all the friends, I just want to publicly thank you for all that you do.
You tirelessly challenge our country and its leaders to see our children and to understand that when we lift them up, we lift up the entire country.
Click on the video below to watch Friday’s press conference in full.