Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Highlights New Report Supporting Her Investment in Universal Child Care

Earlier today, Governor Hochul delivered remarks at the Moms First Frontline Employers and Childcare event to highlight her child care agenda following a new report released by Moms First and McKinsey & Company.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor's Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

 Whenever I see Reshma, I think of the power of one - an extraordinary individual who has this innate capacity to bring so many others along in her vision. And so, we're all catching up with where you've been probably for decades, and I thank you for that. But also, I'm glad you mentioned Girls Who Code, one of my favorite programs ever devised, and you really touched the lives of so many young women across the state. I was at many of the graduations and the programs. I'm so impressed with that. So everyone who's part of Girls Who Code originally, but Mom's First and certainly our partners at McKinsey, do extraordinary work and everybody else who's been involved in this, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for coming from other parts of the country. Who's not a New Yorker? All New Yorker wannabes, right? That's usually what I find, but you're welcome here. Welcome to New York, as Taylor Swift would say.

But I'm so happy to be here. First of all, because I'm not in Albany. Just came down, I had to go back up, so I'm going to do a really long speech to drag it out, but I have responsibilities up there. Part of my Budget is to fund a massive infusion of money into the path for universal child care. So I need to get back up there to complete this Budget, and I hope you're all proud of it. You don't hear about that as much. We had a major announcement with new Mayor Mamdani at the time, I think it was his eighth day in office, and we had been talking about it since the summer and fall, and our teams got together in a very intense way right after the election. I said, "Let's just get this done." Let people have faith and hope that this is actually going to be a reality. So we did make an announcement on January 8th. Reshma was there, of course - she's at everything - and talked about an investment in where New York City is and the rest of the state, and they're two different places. They're two different places because New York City is further ahead in providing 4-year-old programs. We don't even have that statewide. We don't have 4-K statewide. So I made a commitment that we'll do this statewide.

We'll get to 3-K as well in the rest of the state, but New York City is committing to $1.2 billion for a 2-year-old program, 2-Care, which says, "Parents we're starting to get down to the younger ages. We're going to be taking care of your kids even before they qualify for the school program." So that was a game changer, and I could not be prouder to have been there that day. I will never forget the joy in the room when people thought that their dreams were coming true and as Reshma says, the promised land, we finally achieved it.

And I've invested significant dollars as the Governor because you're judged by the money in programs. That's a real commitment, right? You can't just talk the talk, you have to fund the walk, that I figured out. And we put $8 billion in child care since I've been Governor the last few years, and that's a real statement. But it took us from where we were during the pandemic - I heard some of the speakers talk about what happened. This was the epicenter of the global pandemic, right here in New York City, and we had so many jobs unfilled because moms were home taking care of the kids when the kids were working, trying to learn remotely. Remember that phenomenon? It was like a disaster, but we lost a lot of time and our kids were behind and - getting on my other topic of getting cell phones out of schools that's for another time - but that's something else I trying to do to bring back our kids to a sense of normalcy after they were so disconnected from real life and their friends and their normal routines, and it really set them back emotionally.

So we had a lot to do, but also a lot of child care centers closed down during that time. They couldn't get the staff, they shut down, so we had to infuse money into more locations. I've made a major commitment toward building spaces or helping people make adjustments to their homes for home child care. The workforce was decimated. People were exhausted, who had stayed in this or had gone to other careers, and said "I just can't do this," so we had a shortage there. So we had a lot to do to build the foundations of what universal child care would even look like, and that's what I've been working on for four straight years up until now. So now, we're in a position to really put the money there, talk about the plans, and I cannot be prouder of what we're doing here. My friend in New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham, has also announced universal child care. I always tease her about her funding source, which is very different than mine. You can ask her where she's getting her money from. I can't do that here, friends, but it's a commitment from other women Governors. But I also know there's a lot of enlightened colleagues I have who are males, male Governors who are very interested. So we often believe in New York - as New York goes, the nation follows - and we have to show the path.

We're not done yet. These are the early stages. But what I love to hear was the commitment of businesses, the corporations, the largest employers in our nation, and right here with Chobani and - who's from Chobani here? Twice a day. I just consume Chobani. I just, they pack me a lunch pail every morning when I leave home like a little kid. I have my Chobani, so tell the CEO it's keeping the Governor going. Can we see one that's like chocolate chip? Can you work on that one? I digress a little bit, but I don't worry, I used to make chocolate chip cookies for my kids all the time and eat half the dough before they got home from school.

But, I am a mom and what that has done is changed my whole outlook on this because I was the mom years ago who had to leave a job that I cherished. Since I was a teenager, I wanted to work on Capitol Hill someday. If you work for a Senator and that's as high as women aspire to when you're at that age in life. It was like you're never going to run for office, you're going to work for the guys and make them look good. And that's what we did, we always did that. And I had a chance to work for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of the highest honors of my life, extraordinary statesman. I miss that era, but I had to give it up when my husband and I had our first child because guess what? No child care. It was a rarity in Washington D.C. at the time for women to be having kids and thinking they're still going to go back to work. So I stayed home, tried to start a little home business, and tried to make it work. Another baby comes along and so we ended up leaving. We moved back home closer to family where the babysitting was free, but also understanding that I was set in a place I didn't expect to be, which was, "What am I doing next?" I really had no plan B. I had the kids, I was a mom, but what was going to happen next?

And so I don't want other moms to have that uncertainty of thinking they had to give up a career they love, or the money they needed to bring in for their families, and a lot of people are just trying to just get by. They're working a couple of jobs and trying to go to school, and if they don't have that support system, it just doesn't work. I talked to a lot of women about running for office and they say, "What's going to happen to the kids?" I said I know I'm still guilty I wasn't there for my daughter's seventh birthday, I was campaigning. I still have that guilt, but I said, "You have to make sacrifices." But also, if you have a support system, a community around you that understands, it's so much easier. It's so much easier. And at the time, back when I was having my kids, there was no sense that anybody else had responsibility other than you. You chose to have kids, it is your problem to figure out and we'll just put somebody else in your job.

That was the attitude. There was no sense that you need to come back to your position. So the world has changed dramatically. I love what has happened. Those babies are now having their own babies, which is why I'm New York's, not just first mom [governor], the first grandmother [governor]. I've had two little ones, and so my kids now can find child care and there's more enlightenment around this from the employers.

And so I have long believed that, yes, government has a role and it's usually financial and it's usually the regulations and the rules and the investments. I will do that. I will continue doing that. But what your data is showing is that - and I've read the report - that nine out of 10 parents are still having child care disruptions affecting their ability to work. That means our economy is being affected and no one talked about those terms for years. This has a detrimental impact on our competitiveness, our ability to produce, stay ahead of other nations. And so, the whole society and our economy and our businesses need to be vested in supporting families. And it is a very short time in life. If you can show support to a new employee you have, they have a baby, they need some time off, and you support them with other services, or you're smart enough to have onsite child care, I think that's the smartest way to go if you have the capacity.

I was speaking at a very large tech company in the North Country of New York - lots of room - and they said "We have 3,000 employees here, mostly male, and I'm trying to bring more women to this business." The first thing I said was, "Do you have a child care center?" Looked at me like I had two heads. Like, 'Why would I have a child care center?" Because you want to have women work here and you can lift this burden from them. And guess what? The men will appreciate it too. You'll have a more engaged workforce because they can drop down and give the kids their lunch and their medicine and see how they're doing, give them a hug and get back to work and not worry about them. Do you realize how much better this is for you? So, the light went off, and so companies like Walmart that are just supporting companies and Chobani and all the other ones are here today, I appreciate that.

But also, I believe that the state has a responsibility to not just encourage this, but if you're looking for state dollars from us, for your investment in your business, then there's some conditions attached. One of them is you're going to take care of your workforce, meaning your parents. And so I'm really proud that when we landed Micron, the largest private investment in American history going on in upstate New York right now - we did the groundbreaking for major semiconductor manufacturing, it's going to be a game changer - one of the conversations I had with the CEO was we want you to build child care on site. You know what? The answer was "yes." That showed to me that their values are aligned with ours. I'm happy to support you because I know you're also going to be doing the recruiting out of some of our hardest, our toughest neighborhoods in Syracuse, where young people never have a role model, no one lifting them out of their circumstances. Micron is doing that right now, starting workforce training as we speak, years before they're going to be building the first semiconductor chip and taking care of the workforce.

That's the enlightenment that I want to see permeated throughout all of our businesses, large and small. If you're a little mom-and-pop business on a main street, like the little flower shop I helped my mother start, I used to work at, then maybe you don't have space for this, but you work together with the 10 other businesses on your block. Maybe you support a child care center with subsidies or you directly give your employees the money to do it. Maybe you try to recruit someone to open one in a storefront three doors down. Be engaged. Be engaged. And you know what it does? It sets you apart from your competitors here as well. Guess where people are going to want to work when they're choosing, whether it's in one of these skyscrapers here in New York City or a small town anywhere in the USA? They're going to go to the place that says, "We value you and your family."

As I said, it's just a few years. Get them to school age, you don't have to worry about it, maybe some afterschool is a challenge, but that is a short investment in your employees and they can end up staying with you for life because I know the cost of, when someone leaves, the retention costs are extraordinary. Having to find someone new, train them, it's a long time before they can be as productive as the person who left. So be smart about this. We'll continue being there at the state level. I'm proud to lead the effort and speak about it nationally about what we're doing here in New York, but I would love to be able to say that I, in New York, also have the most enlightened, smartest, competitive, pro-family business communities anywhere in the nation, and I'm putting it out there as a challenge to all of you. If you're from another state, don't take that back to your state, we're doing it first here. Okay? Because I'm very competitive.

But don't you think that even as a country, if we solve for this, we have the door open to more than 50 percent of the population, and we help them and nurture them as they're young parents and show support, that they're going to just be incredibly engaged and productive employees for you, and that helps our productivity, our GDP and everything else flows from that. That's what this report is all about. Supporting people will support your businesses. And I've said a hundred times, the only reason people need child care is to go to work. They're working for all of you. They're working for all the businesses, and therefore you have a vested interest in making that easier and more affordable.

Those are my commitments. I don't think we're going to be replacing these jobs with AI anytime soon either. I hope not. We're leading those challenges. This is a, I digress, but I'm also starting a commission to deal with the future of work in the age of AI and the benefits, the jobs that we think will come from this that we embrace, the displacement that we need to be on top of right now, so there's not a white collar wipe out. Because those are also parents in those jobs, and I do not want to see unemployment rates go up among those young individuals just starting their families, starting their careers, having kids, and all of a sudden you don't have that income. So I'm very cognizant of the fact that there's a lot of forces at play here that I'm focusing on. Meanwhile, I have to continue focusing on the Budget, and I'm going to get back to Albany very shortly, but I thank you all for being here. Just your presence here says we can solve this.

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