The Daily BS • Bo Snerdley Cuts Through It!
The Daily BS • Bo Snerdley Cuts Through It!

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Trump team eyes federal child-care money for parents who stay home with their kids

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BS BULLETIN:

  • The Trump administration is reportedly drafting a plan that would let some married couples receive federal child-care assistance when one parent stays home to raise their children.
  • The proposal, championed by Vice President JD Vance, would use the existing Child Care and Development Fund and could provide roughly $9,000 per child annually to qualifying families.
  • Critics are already furious, accusing the administration of promoting “traditional families” and warning that the change could divert limited money from working parents and single mothers.

For decades, Washington has helped parents pay someone else to watch their children while they work.

The Trump administration is considering a different question: Why shouldn’t some of that help go to parents who decide to do the child care themselves?

Administration officials are drafting a major change to federal child-care policy that would allow qualifying married couples with one stay-at-home parent to receive assistance from the Child Care and Development Fund, according to a New York Times report.

The proposal has become a top priority for Vice President JD Vance.

Under existing rules, the federal program primarily helps lower-income parents pay for child care while they work, attend school or participate in job training. The proposed change would create a new category called “parent-based child care.”

According to draft language reviewed by the Times, one married parent could receive assistance for caring for the couple’s own child provided the other spouse works at least 35 hours per week and the household meets income requirements.

The benefit could amount to roughly $9,000 per child annually, depending on how the final policy is structured. It would be a significant change in how Washington thinks about child-care assistance. Instead of subsidizing only outside child care so parents can enter or remain in the workforce, the government would recognize staying home and raising children as a form of child care worthy of financial support.

The idea fits neatly with Vance’s long-running emphasis on marriage, parenthood, and policies designed to make raising children more economically feasible.

It also fits with previous Trump administration moves aimed at families. In May, the White House announced initiatives it said would expand child-care choices and “better empower stay-at-home parents.”

But there’s a catch. The administration isn’t proposing — at least for now — a giant new pot of money. Instead, the benefit would come from the existing Child Care and Development Fund, which already helps families pay for child care.

About 80 percent of the 870,000 families currently receiving the subsidies have single working parents, most of them mothers, according to federal data cited by the Times. Democrats and progressive groups immediately accused the administration of taking money intended for working families and using it to promote its preferred model of marriage and family life.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., called the proposal an effort to “raid” money for working families and warned that it would make parents compete for an already inadequate pool of child-care funding. The National Women’s Law Center went considerably further, calling the proposal part of a “pronatalist, patriarchal agenda” designed to push women out of public life.

The reported proposal would apply only to married couples. Unmarried couples with one stay-at-home parent would not qualify under the current draft. The proposal could still change before it becomes public. If approved by the White House, the rule would go through the federal rulemaking process, including a public-comment period, and could take effect as early as next year.

MY QUICK TAKE

This ought to be an interesting argument.

Washington can subsidize strangers to watch your kids while you work — but suggesting Mom or Dad might get some help for raising them personally suddenly unleashes the “patriarchal agenda.”

I suspect a whole lot of parents are going to wonder why staying home with your own children is the one form of child care that doesn’t count.

DBS WIRE SOURCES:

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