And now the Republican nominee for president is out with a new plan that seems to break with conservative orthodoxy.
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Many think this is Donald’s latest attempt to woo women voters from Clinton, who has historically appealed to more women and who now leads him 42% to 35% overall, according from a Reuters poll early this morning. For an increasing number of families, child care is their single largest expense – higher than what they pay for their housing.
Trump had said little about child care until his daughter, Ivanka, surprised many at the Republican National Convention in July by promising it will be a centerpiece of a Trump administration.
“There’s no policy on Hillary Clinton’s website pertaining to any of these issues – child care, elder care, or maternity leave or paternity leave, for that matter”, Ivanka Trump said. “[Ivanka] is the one who has been pushing for it so hard: ‘Daddy, Daddy we have to do this, ‘” Donald said in Iowa on September 13.
The proposal – heavily influenced by his daughter Ivanka Trump – would offer six-weeks paid maternity leave for mothers who do not already get leave from their employers.
Total cost is not clear, but Trump says he would pay for this all by cracking down on unemployment insurance fraud.
According to The Associated Press, Hillary Clinton does, and she is calling for 12 weeks of leave for mothers and fathers to be paid for by taxes on the wealthy.
In another key point, the proposal would allow parents to deduct the average cost of child care from their taxes.
To that effect, Donald’s proposed tax deductions would help stay-at-home parents save extra money for their children through Dependent Care Savings Accounts. Trump accused Clinton – who started her career at the Children’s Defense Fund and who’s considered child care a signature issue of her political career – of not having any proposals for parents anxious about their child care challenges.
“I don’t know how useful it is to spend too much time with you on this if you’re going to make a comment like that”, Ivanka Trump said after a question that centered on her father’s 2004 statement that pregnancy is “an inconvenience for a business”. Accounts set up for elderly dependents could be used for in-home nursing care, long-term care and other services. She has been closely tied to his child care proposal. And Maya agrees. “Donald Trump’s plan leaves 21st-century working families behind”, she added. Ivanka Trump didn’t have much of an answer for that one, starting with this riff, “I am all for multiple plans on both sides of the aisle being presented to the American people on this issue”. Those benefits would be offered on a sliding scale based on need.
A Reuters/Ipsos survey released this week gave Trump a narrow edge in a two-way race, 43 percent to 41 percent – his first lead in Colorado in the 2016 election.
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“I think it’s about time”, said Anne Sweeny, a retired Aston resident, when asked about her a GOP nominee proposing paid maternity leave.
