Child care allows parents to enter or stay in the labor force, improves the well-being of families and communities, yields long-term positive outcomes for future generations, and buttresses economic growth. Yet in the United States, child care is perceived and funded as a private responsibility that is made possible by women's unpaid or underpaid labor. The United States' failure to invest in this crucial sector has created a fragile and patchwork system unable to meet the demand for child care. The pandemic pushed the already precarious child care sector to the brink of collapse. In response, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (CRRSAA) included initial relief funding to the child care sector, followed by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which included an even larger investment to better stabilize the sector and support families with children. The ARPA relief dollars were the largest federal investment in the child care sector since World War II, but with the expiration of child care stabilization dollars in September 2023 and the upcoming expiration of the CCDBG supplemental funding, the sector will be left with a funding cliff that will only exacerbate its fragility. What lessons have we learned from this short-term investment? While the pandemic child care relief dollars have provided critical support for families and early educators as they navigate the crisis, these one-time relief funds are not nearly enough to remedy the failures in the existing child care market. Moreover, not all impacts of the expiration will be immediate. The negative effects of this expiration will be long term and deeply damaging. Only sustained and robust public investment can address the long-term structural flaws and build a child care system where all families can find and afford care and where all early educators are valued and paid robust wages and benefits.