Childcare in the U.S. is frequently mediocre, sometimes awful, and very occasionally deadly. If you read my recent article, “The Hell of American Day Care,” then you know all about this—and you have some sense of why such conditions prevail. Among the reasons: States have primary responsibility for childcare. And many states do a lousy job.

But the federal government isn't powerless to fix the problem. Through the Child Care and Development Fund, it provides most of the money that states use to subsidize childcare for low-income parents. That subsidy gives officials in Washington some leverage: They can insist that any state or any provider using federal funds live up to federal standards.

Officials haven't really used the leverage before: The last time the Department of Health and Human Services issued safety and quality regulations for childcare was 1998, shortly after legislation created the Fund. Those standards were minimal, creating the loose regulatory environment in which so many shoddy child care providers can operate.

But change may be coming, thanks to the Obama Administration. On Thursday, HHS officials announced that they were formally proposing a new, stricter set of regulations on childcare. Some of the regulations would establish a national baseline of quality standards—like making sure every caregiver has CPR training and gets a full background check, using fingerprints. Other regulations would require states to collect and post more information about childcare providers on the internet, so that parents can determine for themselves which ones are likely to take the best care of their kids.

Another set of regulations would require states to ease the administrative hassle of signing up for childcare vouchers—and then staying on the program. If you want to know why that’s important, you should read Brigid Schulte’s story in Thursday’s Washington Post, about the difficulty low-income parents face when trying to get child care assistance.