One of the cornerstones of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan for families and children is universal pre-K—the opportunity for young children in every household to attend public preschool. “We’re going to make sure that every three- and four-year-old in America has access to quality preschool,” Biden has said in promoting the program. It’s a more than laudable goal which not only gives children a solid start in learning, but also frees up a big chunk of their families’ budgets, saving the cost of private daycare or preschool and allowing parents more freedom in choosing work opportunities. With every good idea a Democrat comes up with that helps regular people and boosts the economy, there’s a Republican saying “we’re not going to do that.” In this case, it’s a bunch of red states which are threatening to boycott the program. We’ve seen this before with Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. That legislation was written to make Medicaid expansion universal among the states, but the Supreme Court decided it had to do something to undercut the law, so they made that provision optional, leaving tens of millions of people without healthcare. This legislation, Build Back Better, gives $110 billion in federal funding for states to offer free prekindergarten, allowing states to pursue the funding or not. And for a growing number of Republican states, it’s “not.” Read more