The Trump-Vance proposal reported in The New York Times over the weekend to redirect funds from low-income families’ child care needs to payments for married stay-at-home parents is a ploy to devastate the child care sector. This move will harm families whose households depend on all available adults to work and will stall the economy overall, without creating more choices for parents. Most people raising kids work in order to pay the bills; $9,000, the amount a married family with a stay-at-home parent would receive from this proposal, will not replace a breadwinner’s salary. We advocate instead for more public dollars going to families of all kinds, to give them the time and financial support that helps them thrive. This includes federal investments in affordable high-quality child care, paid family and medical leave, and policies that maximize people’s choices and economic security. Government should not penalize working parents or dictate whether or not parents should be in the labor force.
Women accounted for 100 percent of the 32,000 net job losses in July, and further cuts to child care subsidies will multiply these numbers. This proposal would also harm the child care sector, disproportionately women workers. Moreso, the Administration should not be imposing an out-of-touch Heritage Foundation notion of family on the American people, attacking single parents, or pitting families against each other.
“There are evidence-based proposals to support families of all kinds, with the support of supermajorities of Americans across party lines: affordable, high-quality child care; a fully refundable Child Tax Credit; and a federal paid family and medical leave program,” said Paid Leave for All director Dawn Huckelbridge. “We should be supporting all families, giving them more flexibility, and making real investments in them — not making them compete for resources that have always been too scarce and insufficient to meet working families’ needs.”