House rejects motion to recommit DHS budget after heated debate over child care funding

Mississippi lawmakers sparred on the House floor over the state’s decision not to restore child-care assistance in the Department of Human Services conference report, and a motion to recommit the bill for further conference failed.

"Parents are not going to be able to go to work. Employers will be impacted. Child care providers, and you may only have a couple of them in your districts, will close because they won't have enough money to take care of our children," said Representative Miss Summers (Lady from Hines), who moved to recommit the bill to the conference committee and urged lawmakers to find general-fund dollars to shore up child-care vouchers.

The appropriation chairman responded that the conferees shifted prior federal funding and the conferees had limited state resources. "This was federal money that is no longer with us, and there are millions of dollars in this budget that we're having to take on ourselves," the committee chairman said in explaining the conference position.

Members debated whether funds could be moved from other pots or whether the Department of Human Services could reallocate existing TANF or other funding to child care; supporters of the recommit motion said providers and working parents would face immediate harm if assistance ended. The chair and other conferees maintained the budget reflected the options available to the conference committee and that the committee had vetted the packages extensively.

When the House called the roll on Representative Summers’s motion to recommit, the motion failed on a roll-call vote, "by vote of 39 yay, 76 nays, the motion fails." The chamber then proceeded with other conference reports.

The House record shows the discussion occurred during the conference report explanation and post-explanation debate on the DHS appropriation; no change to the conference report was adopted during the session.

What’s next: because the motion to recommit failed, the conference report remained in place as adopted on the House floor. Members seeking restored child-care funding will have to pursue separate supplemental or future budget action, or press the department and conferees to find reallocated funds in other bills.