The families are easy to describe: a foster mother who considered giving up a baby boy because she couldn’t afford his daycare; a medical technician who stopped buying groceries to cover infant care; a single mother in Texas earning $300 a week for whom the cheapest childcare she could find would cost $975 a month. All of them qualify for government-funded childcare assistance. All of them are waiting.
An analysis by The Associated Press found that as of spring 2026, children were waiting for childcare aid in 23 states and the District of Columbia — a number that has grown from just 8 states in 2023. In three additional states, eligible families who applied were simply turned away. By a separate measure from the National Women’s Law Center, more than 400,000 children were on assistance waitlists in the second half of 2025 — a figure that has more than tripled since early 2024, according to NPR.
The main driver is well-documented: $28 billion in pandemic aid expired in the fall of 2024, and the Republican-led Congress declined to extend the money. States were forced to narrow eligibility and shrink their rolls.
The federal childcare assistance program — the Child Care and Development Fund — distributes roughly $12.3 billion a year to help low-income families, people experiencing homelessness, and families with children in foster care pay for care. But even in flush years, the program has reached only about 22 percent of families who qualify under their state’s rules, advocates say. Meanwhile, childcare costs rose 29 percent between 2020 and 2024, according to Child Care Aware of America.
Nevada offers one of the starkest illustrations of what happens when the federal floor collapses. In April 2024, Nevada’s childcare assistance program served 15,230 families. After eligibility rules tightened, that number fell to roughly 5,700 families by April 2026 — about one-third of what it had been two years earlier, the Nevada Independent reported. To qualify, families now must earn below 41 percent of the state median income, roughly $33,000 for a family of three — rules that Nevada advocates describe as the most restrictive childcare eligibility in the country. By comparison, Maine allows families earning up to 150 percent of the state median income to qualify. Without assistance, Nevada’s average single mother with two children would spend 70 percent of her income on childcare, according to a 2025 analysis by The Children’s Cabinet.
In Indiana, nearly 37,000 children were on the state’s waitlist by spring 2026, after the state launched one in December 2024. The AP documented the case of one foster mother who considered giving up custody of a baby boy — not because she didn’t want to care for him, but because the family couldn’t cover his childcare bill, and without affordable care, his biological mother couldn’t bring him home either. Indiana’s Republican governor later directed $200 million in state surplus funds to the program, moving roughly 8,000 children off the waitlist.
Federal policy has not provided broader relief. This year, 40 congressional Republicans signed a letter calling for “robust” funding of the federal childcare program; instead, it received the same appropriation as the year before, the AP reported. At an Easter White House luncheon, President Trump told attendees: “We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare. You got to let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it, too.”
In Nevada, advocates are aiming at the 2027 legislative session. The Children’s Cabinet is seeking a bill that would raise the income eligibility threshold to 85 percent of the state median income, or roughly $70,000 for a family of three. At least one state senator has gone further, filing a bill draft request for a universal childcare system.
The argument for urgency goes beyond family finances. Research has consistently found that high-quality early care boosts children’s social-emotional and academic development. For children on a waitlist, each year they age past the window for subsidized care is a year that cannot be recovered.