Presidents should resist the urge to rewrite the dictionary. Such powers are not in the Constitution. Yet, President Joe Biden seems bound and determined to treat language in the style of Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty: “When I use a word, … it means just what I choose it to mean—nothing more nor less.”

Exhibit A is the title he has given his attempt at domestic policy micromanagement: the “Build Back Better Act.” As private and religious preschool leaders told a gathering of U.S. Senators last week, the plan will do more limiting than building. What the White House has defined as “the most transformative investment in children and caregiving in generations” will turn out to be “a complete flop,” according to these preschool leaders.

“There is no way that this government will provide families with enough subsides to make up for the cost that the ‘build back broker’ plan is going to increase,” said Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C,) in his opening remarks at the roundtable. That view was echoed by U.S. Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Jodie Ernst (R-Iowa), and Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and a host of private school leaders, including leaders from religious and non-religious institutions.

Examples of the bill’s proposed restrictions include a provision that says private preschool providers cannot set their own salary and wage scales. Operators must follow the pay scales of public school elementary teachers—taking away private companies’ ability to decide how to pay their employees.

Another new rule would require centers to reduce student-teacher ratios, making it increasingly expensive for private preschools to operate. Economic reality would force schools to pass these new costs on to families.

Scott Bright, from ABC Child Development Center in Colorado, told the senators, “The Build Back Better plan will take the 31 flavors, so to speak, of options, that parents have and narrow them down to one or two options in the end.”

Thomas Carroll, superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Boston Catholic Schools, said the plan would be a “complete flop” and would interfere with the “deep relationships [that religious schools have] with communities and parents.” Boston’s Catholic school system operates 101 schools serving more than 30,000 students; approximately one-fifth of their students are age 5 or below.

Carroll is concerned that the bill does not contain religious freedom protections for participating private providers and threatens the operations of some 52% of all providers in the U.S. because these private schools adhere to their religious faiths.

“It’s important that we have a set of pluralistic options” for parents, Carroll said. He explained that religious schools would have to “give up their faith” in order to comply with the restrictions in the proposal. Stephen Reel, head of school for Mitchell Road Christian Academy and former acting CEO of the Association of Christian Schools International, echoed Carroll’s concerns.

(Full disclosure: I am on the board of directors at the Academy).

In total, the proposal seems to have a new regulation for each of the $3.5 trillion that will be spent on everything from construction and transportation to health care and preschool.

As Max Eden explained in Newsweek, the proposal stipulates that child care centers cannot use federal funds to repair or expand buildings that are “primarily” used for religious purposes. This means that if a church operates a child care center, they cannot use Build Back Better funds to renovate their buildings to comply with the proposal’s requirements that the centers operate more like federal Head Start centers.

That the Biden administration wants child care and preschool operators to resemble Head Start centers is another concerning element of the proposal. Head Start has been an utter failure for decades. A longitudinal study of students participating in Head Start centers found that the children experienced no lasting academic benefits from their participation. Research finds that the centers are plagued by wasteful spending and even negligence and child abuse in some cases.

Working families need more options when it comes to childcare and education, not more restrictions cloaked in Humpty-Dumpty obscurantism. The administration wants to redefine childcare and preschool to mean “what Washington chooses to allow,” a definition with which no parent can be happy.

While leaders of some religious organizations that provide childcare and prekindergarten believe their students could benefit from President Joe Biden’s $1.85 trillion Build Back Better bill, they worry that a nondiscrimination provision in the social policy bill could disqualify children who utilize their programs from such benefits.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Orthodox Union are part of a coalition of faith-based groups that are lobbying to have parts of the legislation rewritten to prevent them from having to turn families away who want to enroll in their centers.

In an action alert, Catholic leaders urged their advocates to write to Congress about the potential impact of the bill’s current language, which would give certificates to parents to choose their providers. The funding method would classify faith-based providers as recipients of federal financial assistance.

Such a move would place the providers, who have historically been exempt under current funding methods, under requirements of certain federal laws, namely the Americans with Disabilities Act and Title IX, which forbids sex discrimination.

“As a general rule, Catholic schools and most nonpublic schools purposefully avoid federal financial recipient status, because it triggers a whole host of federal regulatory obligations with which nonpublic schools are not currently required to comply,” Michael B. Sheedy, the executive director of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote in a letter last week to U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, according to the New York Times.

Catholic leaders say the bill also might require the church to obey laws that govern Head Start programs, even if their programs don’t offer Head Start.

“Head Start nondiscrimination provisions to faith-based providers could, for instance, interfere with faith-based providers’ policies or practices that acknowledge any difference between males and females, such as sex-specific restrooms, or with their preferences for hiring employees who share the providers’ religious beliefs,” according to the Conference’s bill analysis.

Leaders also fear the Americans with Disabilities Act provisions would force providers to pay for expensive renovations to facilities and in some cases, churches.

“Although, of course, Catholic schools and other Catholic entities endeavor greatly to be accessible to all persons, especially persons with disabilities, there are, nevertheless, many cases where new renovations would be required that are cost-prohibitive at present,” according to the analysis.

Faith-based providers make up a substantial part of the nation’s child care services, with 53% of families who used center-based care choosing them for their children, according to a 2020 survey by the Bipartisan Policy Center. Trust was the main reason parents cited for choosing their provider.

“The Archdiocese of Miami serves over 2,600 students in pre-kindergarten, over half of which would be classified as coming from a high-poverty background,” said Jim Rigg, superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Miami. “If non-public schools are excluded from this bill, many new families will be drawn toward programs that are free of cost, regardless of their quality. We know we do an excellent job of educating young children and believe that families should make the best choice for their child’s education regardless of their economic status.”

Jennifer Daniels, the Conference of Catholic Bishop’s associate director for public policy, said religious protections have been in place for years and have allowed faith-based providers to maintain their religious identity and offer religious instruction.

“They’ve changed the way that program is going to be designed,” she said. Previous scholarship programs for low-income families allowed them to choose religious schools, but the new law would force those schools to comply with the same rules as secular schools thereby eliminating that choice for those parents.

“Catholic teaching tells us that parents are their child’s first and primary educator, so they should have a say in where their child gets to go to school and what type of school that is,” said Daniels. “If they choose a religious school for their child, they should have the ability to do that.”