It was toward the end of her press conference advocating to restore funding for child care subsidies that State Rep. Jehan Booth-Gordon expressed her shock.

The TV cameras were off and most print reporters had gone when Booth-Gordon said she heard something recently on the floor of our historic state capitol in Springfield that she never dreamed she’d ever hear in her career as a legislator.

She heard Rep. Jeanne Ives, R-Wheaton, defend cuts to child care subsidies and say, “I am telling you right now, I am not interested in providing people where you don’t know the paternity.

“You need to have a verifiable need. You better know who the daddy is and whether or not he can afford that child and whether or not taxpayers should be funding that or if there’s actual child support he can provide.”

Gov. Bruce Rauner’s cuts to child care subsidies have eliminated assistance to 90 percent of families that previously qualified. This is bad public policy, much like Ronald Reagan’s false assertion about “welfare queens.” It’s much like the failed initiative to require drug testing for recipients of Food Stamps. Conflating separate issues leads to false assumptions and bad public policy.

Without child care subsidies, working parents are being forced to quit jobs. Child care facilities are being forced to lay off workers. Illinois is losing federal reimbursements.

Public policy needs to be based on real facts, not false “facts” made up to support biases.

Here are some real facts:

Child care subsidies were implemented in Illinois in the 1990s with bipartisan support as part of the welfare to work initiative. These subsidies are economic necessities, not optional perks.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, child care is unaffordable for minimum-wage workers. In a report using 2014 figures from Illinois, the EPI found:

• Child care costs for an infant amount to more (102.5 percent) than full-time, in-state college tuition at public colleges.
• Full-time, minimum-wage earners need to spend 55.3 percent of income on child care.
• For an infant, the cost of day care amounts to 74.8 percent of full-time, minimum wage earnings.

Ives, Rauner and other Republicans favoring cuts to child care subsidies have conflated concepts that need to be addressed separately. If saving the state money is the issue, restore these cuts. Also look at expanding Medicaid funding to include abortion for low-income women who want an abortion but can’t afford one. (The facts, a first trimester abortion costs $450 and is not covered by Medicaid. However, Medicaid does cover births that can cost up to $300,000 for low-birth weight infants.)

If the state budget is the real issue, make sure all children in Illinois have access to comprehensive sex education and counseling for comprehensive contraceptive options. After all, you don’t really want us to believe girls in Wheaton don’t have sex. The facts: Girls in Wheaton are statistically just as sexually active as low-income girls. Girls in Wheaton don’t ask to see a guy’s income tax form before they have sex.

Let’s also recognize some of these dire state budget situations were created when Rauner eliminated the income tax surcharge. Maybe these issues should have been addressed first before a sweeping ideological move to reduce taxes . . . a move that disproportionately benefits high income earners living in Wheaton. Clare Howard