Ivanka Trump joins dad’s presidential campaign, she chose to support Trump’s child care policy, which Republican nominee unveiled on Tuesday.
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According to Trump aides, Ivanka Trump has encouraged her father for weeks to detail policies that would appeal to parents who feel overburdened or underserved by existing programs, following up on the theme that coursed through her remarks at the convention.
“Our plan includes incentives for more employers to offer on-site child care as well”.
Trump asserted in his stump speech that child care is the largest expense for many families. As explained on the campaign fact sheet: Mr. Trump’s plan will ensure stay-at-home parents will receive the same tax deduction as working parents, offering compensation for the job they’re already doing, and allowing them to choose the child care scenario that’s in their best interest.
Low-income families must stretch to pay for child care and need assistance as payments come due, said Elaine Maag, a senior research associate at the Tax Policy Center. “She has been working so very hard”, Trump said in his speech. The GOP nominee says he could cover the cost by eliminating unemployment fraud.
“Child care is such a problem”, Trump told the crowd, then added, “We’re going to solve that problem”. It would allow single parents making up to $250,000 or couples earning $500,000 to deduct child-care costs for up to four children, capped at the average cost of care in their state. A recent poll shows Trump trailing Hillary Clinton with college-educated white women.
“United States is the only industrialized country in the world that does not provide new mothers with paid maternity leave”, Ivanka said. “Instead, they said that the company complied with the Family and Medical Leave Act, a federal law that requires companies to give employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid time off for the adoption or birth of a child”.
He also called for guaranteeing six weeks’ maternity leave by extending unemployment insurance benefits to working mothers whose employers do not offer paid maternity leave.
“This must change. As a society we need to create policies that champion all parents, enabling the American family to thrive, ” said Ivanka Trump. But if his plan was to saddle Americans with another huge tax break for the rich, they’ve succeeded perfectly. Such accounts would be universal and used for after-school or traditional child care, with a government match of $500 a year – a minuscule amount given the cost of such care, and given the difficulty that lower-income families have putting away money in such accounts.
Trump spoke in a working class Philadelphia suburb and cast the speech as one that would help families who are scraping to get by.
Trump did not lay out how much the proposals would cost, but insisted the extra spending would be offset by economic growth and other cuts.
As the Washington Post noted, “Considering that some people spend more on child care than rent, such a price shift would significantly ease the financial strain for families nationwide”.
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Trump, who stressed that her father has not been in public office for decades, added that “certainly (Clinton) had opportunity to have a concept like that passed” and failed to institute such policies while serving as a first lady, NY senator and secretary of state.
