Perhaps the single most important day care program is the Head Start program. So well-respected is it that even the Reagan administration wanted to retain it (1985 Model Child Care Standards Act). The program, begun by Democrats as a child care and ghetto improvement program, appeals to a Republican because it seeks to ameliorate the effects of poverty by providing the food and education poverty robs the child of. The "head start" for the impoverished child actually is designed to put the child closer to an equal footing with the child who can take food and education for granted.
This being the case, that the current government isn't as willing to fund Head Start nationwide is somewhat surprising. A program like Head Start is expensive, but one could respond that a B-1 bomber is even more expensive. National defense is a matter of choices; while the government in the past few decades has been focusing on the external threats, the internal threats to the security of the United States have all but been ignored. Consequently, the war with the Soviet Union was essentially won in 1989, while the war on poverty and the war on drugs were lost because the government was unwilling (or unable) to commit the needed resources for change and education.
These two problems alone, security and providing for the children, are serious enough problems that the government ought to be willing to intervene in order to guarantee that its children will grow up nutritiously well-fed and prepared to be citizens and contributing members of society. It's one thing for a compassionate society to care for a child that is born with a handicap. It is quite another to allow a handicap caused by malnutrition which could easily and cheaply be avoided. This is obvious in that these children are going to be paying taxes when they are adults. To spend some money now to prepare them to be able to pay more in taxes later sounds mercenary but is how the economics o...