Last week, the New York Times reported on a Trump administration proposal to redirect federal childcare subsidies for working parents to married couples where one spouse is staying home with the kids. But this little treat is only for married couples where one parent stays home. Unmarried couples need not apply. Single parents definitely need not apply.
That’s right. Funds earmarked to help working families (yes, that does mean low and moderate-income families) cover up to $9000 in childcare costs are being redirected to families that can afford to have only one person in the workforce.
This is a pet project of Vice President JD Vance, an opponent of universal childcare and someone who has suggested that working families tap grandparents, maiden aunts, and crazy cat ladies to stay home and watch the kids.
This idea did not originate with Vance, or even the odious Trump administration. It comes from the Project 2025 handbook published by the Heritage Foundation. Shocking.
It’s being touted as pro-family, but only if your family adheres to some 1950’s era definition of family. It’s assuredly not pro-family if you’re not legally hitched, which flies in the face of keeping our religious values separated from our official governmental policies.
The funds come from a $12 billion Childcare and Development Fund crafted in the 1990s to help low and moderate-income parents work or pursue education. Some 80% of the families that receive the funding have single working mothers.
Hmmm, champion life, ban and criminalize abortion, and now penalize women who do have babies by siphoning funding to allow them to work or get an education to families that can afford to have a parent stay home.
As with everything this administration does, the cruelty is so often the point, especially in light of other cuts to programs that support low-income working families.
Supplemental Nutrition Program, Low Income Heating Assistance Program, Medicaid and Head Start (to name a few) come to mind.
It’s called a safety net because it protects the most vulnerable of us. -LAL
