With the help of his daughter, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday unveiled an extensive child care and paid maternity leave proposal that he vowed to make a priority if elected.
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Trump also proposed incentives for employers to provide child-care options at work.
“Out of options, she made the tragic choice to leave her young children in a hot vehicle while she attempted to secure the job in order to better the life of her family”, Trump said. He did so with his daughter Ivanka Trump, an energizing force behind the policy, and behind him.
Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump spoke about the issue at the Republican National Convention in July, but the candidate had not mentioned it publicly until Tuesday.
Clinton, who has said she is the candidate to unify a divided country, made the “deplorables” comment at a fundraiser Friday night in NY.
Clinton also wants to guarantee 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave. The candidate said in his speech that the maternity-leave policy would be paid for by cleaning up fraud and improper payments in the unemployment insurance program, which some studies estimate at $3.3 billion a year. Lower-income earners would receive child-care spending rebates through expanding the existing Earned Income Tax Credit, the campaign said.
Trump would give a tax break to anyone who sets aside up to $2,000 a year to cover costs associated with child care and elder care.
The deduction would apply only to individuals earning $US250,000 ($A334,600) or less, or $US500,000 or less if filing jointly. Per a campaign memo shared with The Washington Post early Tuesday, the Trump plan “will rewrite the tax code to allow working parents to deduct from their income taxes child-care expenses for up to four children and elderly dependents”. What’s more, the government would match half of the first $1,000 deposited per year. Paid maternity leave, a humane and low-priced provision available to women in virtually every other country with a developed economy that is favored by a majority of Americans, Republican and Democrat, should not be a controversial issue in a political party that calls itself pro-family-unless, of course, you think “Not actually thinking it’s okay to chop up babies and sell them” is exhaustive of what it means to be “pro-family”.
Trump’s piece was published hours before her father was to announce his child care proposal at a rally in Ashton, Pa.
The timing of the announcement also raised questions. The accounts would allow tax-deductible contributions and tax-free appreciation and could be used to pay for child care, after-school programs and school tuition.
Dependent-care savings accounts would be available to all.
But the plan was met with criticism from the Clinton campaign and skepticism from some child care advocacy groups, who warned that the people most in need of relief would not get it.
Trump aides did not address how much the proposals would cost, but stressed that, when combined with other policies including Trump’s tax plan, it would be cost neutral.
Angela Rachidi at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, said that Trump’s proposals show he seems to share Clinton’s goals of helping families pay for child care. He denounced Hillary Clinton’s comments that some of Trump’s supporters fit in a “basket of deplorables”, but, The New York Times notes, “in separate news conferences, House and Senate Republican leaders declined to join Mr. Pence.in rebuking Mrs. Clinton over her remark”.
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Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is scheduled to return to the campaign trail on Friday after taking a few days off to recuperate from pneumonia, MSNBC reported Tuesday.
