State House DFL representatives introduced a major legislative package Monday they said will give children a strong start in life by making child care more affordable, supporting child care providers and expanding access to care.

The Pre to 3 legislative package fully funds the Basic Sliding Fee program, which helps families pay for daycare while they look for work, go to work or attend attend training or school to prepare for work.

They said fully funding the program will provide more affordable child care to the 6,890 Minnesota families currently on the waiting list.

Representatives said the package would increase the child and dependent care tax credit, expanding eligibility to a total of 126,000 families.

The package would also include efforts to streamline and simplify regulations for child care providers, and require that the Department of Human Services makes prompt payments to childcare providers.

The legislation would increase funding for home visiting and funding at-home infant care for new parents. Under the legislation, legislators would fully fund Early Head Start, and the Minnesota Department of Health would be required  to study disparities in access to prenatal care for women of color and provide at-risk mothers and their newborns safe sleep baby boxes and baby care supplies.

The legislation would increase provider rates in the Child Care Assistance Program and include an additional increase for infant care.

“Every child deserves a strong start in life and it truly takes a village to ensure that all of our kids are getting that chance,’ said District 46A Rep. Peggy Flanagan, DFL-St. Louis Park, a member of the House Select Committee on Affordable Health Career, in a press release. “This package of bills casts a wide net on the varied priorities that we must address to ensure our parents and providers have the support they need to help our children succeed.”

DFL representatives said Minnesota is the least affordable state in the nation for center-based care for infants, and cited a statistic that infant care costs an annual average of $14,366 in Minnesota.

District 27A Rep. Peggy Bennett, R-Albert Lea, said she supports bipartisan child care legislation unveiled Monday by the Select Committee on Affordable Child Care that would create a task force to vet and unpack the issues the committee said is causing high costs and access issues in child care.

She said that although there are similar components between the two plans, she believes that by creating the task force, the bipartisan plan would allow legislators to address the issue more completely than spending more money on the issue.

The bill would produce a manual on how to start a child care small business, provide consistent application of the laws and regulations relating to child care providers, provide economic development grants for communities to address local child care needs — such as public and private partnerships — investment in in-home provider startups, expansion of child care within local businesses and using existing community resources such as nursing homes.