While Trump spent the majority of his time on stage laying out his policy specifics, he also took a chance to swipe at Hillary Clinton.
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The Republican presidential candidate outlined his child care and paid parental leave plan during a campaign speech in Aston, Pennsylvania. When I scan Twitter and see conservative journos and consultants and think-tank types decrying this as “a betrayal” on the part of Trump-and even “socialism”-I can’t help asking, “How many of you have wives who work at CVS?” He is expected to flesh out that plan Tuesday, including expanding the deduction to include costs associated with caring for elderly dependent relatives.
The Trump proposal also would offer “spending rebates” of up to $1,200 a year to lower-income families through the Earned Income Tax Credit.
The Trump campaign has emphasized that many sit in the leadership of Trump’s companies and the candidate himself has boasted that his companies offer on-site childcare for its employees-which an AP investigation showed was untrue, and that said facilities were for clients or patrons, and not for workers. A new ad, set to air in the battleground states of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, is squarely aimed at the voters the Trump campaign says Clinton is vilifying.
To achieve this goal, Clinton would seek to boost federal spending on child-care subsidies and provide “tax relief for the cost of child care to working families”. And the number of mothers who do not work outside the home has grown slightly in the last few years, to 29% according to the same Pew survey, after plummeting over the last three decades of the 20th century as women flocked to the workforce. The deduction would be capped at the average cost of care per state of residence.
“The lack of seriousness of this proposal is no surprise given his history of disrespecting women in the workplace and the fact there’s no evidence he ever provided paid family leave or childcare to his own employees”, Clinton aide Maya Harris said.
Women broke for his rival Hillary Clinton 53% to 38% in the latest CNN/ORC poll.
► Trump’s proposed Dependent Care Savings Accounts could be financed by tax-deductible contributions and tax-free appreciation, and parents could use them to finance traditional childcare, after-school programs and tuition for private schools, as well as elder care for aged parents.
That could come at a whopping cost.
“The U.S. economy would slow in the near-term amid increased uncertainty, with growth easing to a level around half a percent below baseline during 2017”, the report said. That’s more than 50 million households. Some estimates indicate that it would cost approximately $300 billion to round up and deport America’s illegal immigration population-a depopulation of the USA that would strip $1 trillion from America’s real GDP virtually overnight.
Trump proceeded to note the parallel between Clinton’s derision towards the American people and her sense of “entitlement” that prompted her to think she would never truly be held accountable for the slew of scandals that have been plaguing her throughout her presidential campaign. Not to mention that that kind of benefit doesn’t help the families who can’t afford to put that much in per year.
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Trump credited his daughter for pushing him to create a stronger family-leave policy. Instead, it offers six weeks of full unemployment benefits. There’s estimated to be around $3 billion in unemployment fraud in the USA every year, a small fraction of what it would take to pay for a new universal benefit. The key question about this plan is whether the GOP will embrace its vision of government-funded support for child care, or whether, like Trump itself, the party will dismiss it as an aberration come 2017.
