When policymakers cut budgets it is important to follow how those cuts affect lives and California’s recent effort to balance its budget will cost 55,000 children their child care services, The San Jose Mercury News reports.

California is struggling with a nearly $20 billion budget deficit. To help close the gap, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state legislature completed a budget that kills the CalWORKS Stage 3 Child Care Program. The governor vetoed funding for the program, according to Preschool California.

These cuts are forcing families to potentially make brutal choices, according to the newspaper.

Their parents – given only about two weeks notice – might have to leave their jobs to care for them. "When I heard this, my heart just dropped," said Rosa Sanchez, a medical assistant at the O.A.S.I.S. Clinic in Oakland who lives in Castro Valley with her two daughters, who are 4 and 7. "Everything that I've ever worked for is just gone. – “Thousands of East Bay families to lose state-subsidized child care Nov. 1,” San Jose Mercury News. 10/18/10.

California faces a tough budget, but these cuts would seem to generate more spending in the future, since parents who have to quit working could well wind up on welfare.

(Thanks to the National Association of Child Care and Referral Agencies for highlighting this news.)

In other child care aid news, only six states set reimbursement rates for providers at 75 percentile of current market rates in 2010, a steep drop from 22 in 2001, according to The National Women’s Law Center. (You can read the full report here.)

How can programs deliver high quality child care to low-income families if states don’t provide enough support? (Thanks to CLASP for highlighting this report.)