Negotiators near agreement on child care and universal pre-K in Biden package

​​Democrats are closing in on securing agreement on two key components of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda, as CNN reported, as they work through details on the universal preschool and child care aspects of the package, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.

For Biden, the looming agreement ensures that a central tenet of his sweeping economic and climate proposal will make it into the final package, which over weeks of negotiations has been scaled down from $3.5 trillion to between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion.

The two early education and care proposals are among the larger elements of a final package in terms of funding, although the total expenditure, expected to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, as CNN notes, hasn’t been finalized yet.

The universal prekindergarten proposal would set up a federal-state partnership, offering states funds to expand public preschool programs to reach an estimated 6 million 3- and 4-year-olds not currently enrolled in preschool, the source said.

For the first three years of the funding, states would not have to match any portion of the federal funds as they ramp up their programs. The state-level match would gradually scale up to 40%, the source said.

Negotiators are also getting close on a program offering subsidized child care for low- and middle-income families, the source said. Most families would not have to pay more than 7% of their incomes.

Like the preschool proposal, states would not be required to match federal funds for the first three years, giving them time to ramp up their projects. After three years, states would provide a 10% match to the federal funds, according to CNN.