When asked how he would reduce the high cost of child care, former President Donald Trump replied that it would be “relatively not very expensive” – ​​at least not compared to the revenue he would raise from tax increases on foreign goods.
Economists are skeptical that the tariffs would be enough to finance Trump’s tax cuts as well as a massive child care program, and Democrats said higher tariffs would raise costs for families by increasing the price of consumer goods. A Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to questions about his child care plans.
Some child care experts agree with Trump on one point: Overhauling the child care system would not be very costly compared to other government spending. But as previous proposals have shown, the costs associated with a government-funded child care system make it politically challenging to implement.
“I think his comments are somewhat accurate – that improvements in child care that make child care more accessible and affordable for families are probably not that expensive, by and large, compared to many other things we already spend money on,” said Chloe Gibbs, an economist at the University of Notre Dame who served on the President’s Economic Advisory Council from 2022 to 2023.
Trump made the remarks about child care during an appearance at the New York Economic Club on Thursday.
“We’re going to raise trillions of dollars,” Trump said, referring to his proposed tariffs. “And although people keep talking about child care being expensive, it’s not very expensive, relatively speaking, compared to the amount we’re going to raise.”
His opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, says she wants to ease the financial burden of caring for families with children or disabled adults. She says she would raise the salaries of child care workers, preschool teachers and other professional caregivers. But her plan lacks details on how she plans to fund these initiatives.
The child care industry is what Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called a “broken market.” Despite low wages, labor costs are high, in part because one person can only care for a few children. These costs are passed on to families, who often can barely afford school tuition. Mothers end up staying at home because child care costs more than they would earn as workers.
Many argue that child care will never be affordable for American families without a massive infusion of taxpayer money.
Three years ago, as part of Build Back Better, a package of bills to strengthen the social safety net and combat climate change, President Joe Biden proposed a program to ensure that no family spends more than 7% of their household income on child care. The proposals for affordable child care and universal pre-K alone totaled $400 billion over 10 years and failed to withstand concerns from Senator Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat from West Virginia, that the overall cost of the package was too high.
Biden has reintroduced the child care and preschool proposals as part of his budget, but it is unlikely to be implemented.
High-quality early education can change a child’s life trajectory, says Hailey Gibbs, a policy analyst at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. Researchers have linked it to higher lifetime earnings and lower rates of incarceration and school dropout.
Another proposal, introduced in 2019 by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a Democrat, would have created a network of public early learning centers and home-based daycare centers that would be free for low-income families. Warren proposed funding the programs, estimated to cost $700 billion over 10 years, through a tax on millionaires.
Such proposals have largely failed due to the costs involved, but some solutions have found bipartisan support. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, a Democrat, and Senator Katie Britt of Alabama co-introduced bills in July that would raise the tax credit households receive for paying for child and dependent care, as well as raise the tax credit for companies that provide child care to their employees.
During his own term, Trump proposed creating a $1 billion fund that would have provided child care subsidies to states and conditioned payment on them loosening regulations. That fund never materialized.
Experts and advocates stress that spending on child care is an investment that can pay off. In the compact term, it could put many more parents and caregivers back to work. The Council for a Strong America, a now-defunct nonprofit that lobbied for public funding to support youth, estimated last year that the country lost about $122 billion in revenue and productivity because of child care problems.
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