And now the Republican nominee for president is out with a new plan that seems to break with conservative orthodoxy.
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Trump’s plan, delivered in the Philadelphia suburbs, was meant to appeal to middle and upper-middle class women who have overwhelmingly supported Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s plan would exclude child care costs up to age 13 from the federal income tax, including costs for both stay-at-home family members and paid caregivers.
The plan also would provide six weeks of paid maternity leave to any mother (sorry dads!) with a newborn child whose employer does not provide the benefit.
That maternity leave being promised is actually six weeks of unemployment benefits, as CNN reported, which Trump intends to fund by ending the annual estimated $3.3 billion worth of unemployment fraud. Clinton in June last year first outlined a programme for universal pre-kindergarten and in May this year proposed to cap childcare costs at ten per cent of household income and to introduce 12 weeks of paid family leave.
He also proposed a new rebate for child care expenses for low-income parents, through the Earned-Income Tax Credit, which his campaign said could be worth almost $1,200 a year per family. He said his plan will expand tax deductions for employers; allow companies to pool resources to provide shared child-care services; and remove “needless requirements” that have prevented employers from using the credit.
As TIME reports, Trump’s plan involves child-care tax credits, paid maternity leave, and subsidies for parents who choose to stay at home to care for their children.
In an interview published Wednesday with the women’s magazine Cosmopolitan, Ivanka Trump implied gay men would be excluded from the plan as she touted its extension of benefits to women everywhere, including those in same-sex marriages.
Yet for Republicans, who have built their brand on a commitment to small government and a reduction of the national debt, Trump’s plan should be radioactive. Trump’s child-care credit favors the wealthy, subsidizing nannies and pricey private day-care facilities while doing little for middle-class and working-poor families.
When we asked the Trump campaign to reconcile these headings with his comment, they responded that those two topics are separate and distinct from “child care”.
“For many families in our country, childcare is now the single largest expense – even more than housing”, Trump said, speaking from prepared remarks. The campaign argued that “child care” refers to ages 0 to 4 – before “early childhood education” begins at age 4 with preschool.
“The choice could not be more clear between Hillary Clinton’s comprehensive paid family leave and childcare plans geared toward the needs of 21st century families and Donald Trump’s 11th hour giveaway to wealthy families like himself”, Harris added. The campaign also said that paid maternity leave is a policy area that’s separate from child care policy.
In terms of the savings account, I like that idea, but Trump’s plan also includes providing $1000 for low-income families as an incentive to start an account. Six weeks of paid leave given exclusively to women might be better than what we have right now (12 weeks of unpaid leave that many parents can’t afford to take), but it is nowhere near sufficient.
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Child-care costs have indeed outpaced rent and tuition in most USA states. Not only compared to Hillary Clinton’s much more well-thought-out plan, but just plain short, in that it isn’t created to help all Americans.
