Thanks to Jimmy McMillan, people worldwide know that rent is too, um, gosh-darned high.

Perhaps child care needs its own McMillan to raise awareness of another issue facing families struggling to make ends meet.

According to the United Way of Southern Chautauqua County’s most recent Community Status Report, it is very likely there is enough child care availability in Chautauqua County, though location, access and care during non-traditional hours can be a problem for working families. If access isn’t a pressing problem, cost is.

Chautauqua County Child Care Council officials estimate the cost for infant child care to be between $7,280 and $9,880. Those estimates are in line with U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s estimates from earlier this year when she announced legislation to expand child care tax breaks for working families. Census Bureau statistics peg the median average household income in Chautauqua County at $41,975 – which means the average county family who has a child in day care is paying between 17.3 and 23.5 percent of their yearly income on child care.

Certainly it can be agreed upon that the cost of child care is too darned high.

The high cost of child care is the reason the Center for American Progress reports family care remains the most common type of child-care arrangement across all marital and employment statuses – though the United Way status report rightly questions the quality of some of those informal arrangements. Three-quarters of full-time employed mothers (75.2 percent) utilize some form of family care at least part of the time, compared to 86.3 percent of part-time employed mothers. Parents often alternate their work schedules to tag-team responsibilities, a major reason for the high costs of child care. We also note the burden the cost of child care can have on working families near the poverty line who can least afford it.

We’re not certain further subsidy is necessarily needed. There are already subsidies tied to TANF that give low-income families child care at no cost to them and a cost ranging between $4.5 and $5.3 million to taxpayers. The TANF subsidy is an existing program that should help low-income families to be able to work.

Working families, meanwhile, could certainly use a hand. U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has proposed expanding the Dependent and Child Care Tax Credit, creating a new child care tax deduction and expanding funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant program, which sent $98 million to New York state in 2013. Other legislation proposes helping more New York businesses provide on-site child care services for their employees by providing a 35 percent tax break on the cost of creating day care facilities to employers who provide child care at the workplace, allowing employers to deduct 20 percent of the costs for child care resources and referral services and expanding the dependent care tax credit for child care expenses to include part-time students. Gillibrand cites a study in which 82 percent of parents who went directly from high school to full-time work cited having to care for children as the single most important reason that they did not go to college. Among parents who attend college after working, 74 percent cite child care and flexible schedules as factors that would encourage them to return to school. Perhaps a program that helps day care providers to be open for families who work after 5 p.m. is worth considering.

Gillibrand’s proposals should receive a fair hearing on Capitol Hill.

Working families deserve that much.