Donald Trump's child care plan, unveiled yesterday, is being widely portrayed as pandering to women in swing states and a deviation from conservative princples.
Not so says IWF's Carrie Lukas, who sets the record straight and explains in a Forbes article why this plan should appeal to conservatives, too. Carrie explains:
Trump doesn’t resort to trying to woo women by entering the Left’s bidding war of promising more and more taxpayer funding for a favored cause. Rather Trump is offering an alternative – and a decidedly conservative – approach to an important set of public policy issues.
While this proposal is mostly being discussed as a tax break for childcare expenses, importantly, these deductions will also be available to families that do not use paid daycare arrangements. 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.
That’s an important point and one that conservatives should embrace. The government shouldn’t be in the business of using subsidies to encourage more families to put their kids in paid daycare if they think that family care is best. Lots of families – including those with modest incomes – make big financial sacrifices to keep a parent home when kids are young and they deserve a break too.
He uses the model of savings accounts – which have been a conservative favorite for education, retirement, and health care – for additional care expenses. His Dependent Care Savings Accounts would allow people to set aside money tax-free, which could then be used for expenses not only for caring for children , but also for the elderly. This is a positive, market-based approach, which would encourage continued innovation and the efficient use of resources, and an important contrast to the Progressives’ steady push to simply have government become both the payer and provider of all such services.