Why Ivanka and Donald Trump’s Child Care Plan Won’t Help Most Americans

First daughter Ivanka Trump may not hold an official position in her father’s administration, but she has nonetheless emerged as the internal presence guiding a proposal for policies addressing affordable child care and paid family leave. President Trump’s eldest daughter reportedly met with members of Congress last week to discuss her policy plan, which is anchored on a sizable child care tax credit.

There is already speculation that Ivanka Trump’s proposal will meet resistance on the Hill because of its $500 billion price tag. Meanwhile, policy experts are voicing concern that the Trump plan would not only be expensive, but fall short in reducing the costs incurred by the average American family.

“Families across the income spectrum are struggling with finding high-quality, affordable child care,” Taryn Morrissey, PhD, an assistant professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C., tells Yahoo Beauty. Morrissey is also one of the co-authors of Cradle to Kindergarten: A New Plan to Combat Inequality, which provides a thorough analysis of what is needed to create American early childhood policies that can improve competitiveness in the global economy.

One thing the research in Cradle to Kindergarten underscores is that the Trump child care plan does little to expand access to opportunity.

As Morrissey explains, practically all American families have to deal with the lack of options for high-quality child care — for young children in particular — not to mention its staggeringly high cost.

“For low-income families, those earning less than $50,000 a year, they can easily spend half of their entire income on child care,” Morrissey notes. She explains that middle- and low-income families face added challenges. Too often, they are forced to deal with the reality of low- or mediocre-quality child care settings that come at too high a price. In turn, these options result in lost opportunities for early learning in higher-quality, but more expensive settings.

Which is why the Trump plan is problematic.

“It might look a little different in its final stages, but the Trump plan we heard on the campaign trail largely focused on deducting child care expenses from taxes. And that’s great for higher income families, who have a tax liability and tax deductions — like Trump himself presumably does,” Morrissey says. “But for those who can’t afford to spend a lot on child care, for those who are low-income and middle-income who don’t have a lot of child care expenses because they can’t afford a high-quality child care setting, they can’t deduct that much, because their expenses are lower. And for families that already have low taxes because their income level is low, this kind of plan offers no real help. It just doesn’t benefit families who need the help.”

Rachel Greszler, a senior policy analyst at the conservative public policy think tank the Heritage Foundation, agrees in many ways. While Greszler says the Trump plan brings potential for “huge savings,” she also notes that the limitation of such a policy is the way it fails to offer significant benefits to low-income families whose tax burden is already limited.

And yet, she adds, “Because this is such a potentially huge deduction for families, my preference would be to see lower taxes overall. If we [implement significant tax deductions around child care], our tax revenue still needs to stay the same. I’d rather see marginal rates come down for everyone, so that families can make more money and better pay for child care, versus certain people getting a certain tax break.”

Greszler continues, “If you have deductions and favor a certain kind of spending, the point is that you want families to be able to afford child care — but we will see more growth in just lowering taxes overall and the government not favoring a certain kind of spending,” for example on child care costs. And, she notes, “If implemented, this credit could be available for after-school activities, camp costs — when the government subsidizes things, it drives up costs. This plan won’t provide a dollar-for-dollar level of relief.”

Adds Morrissey, “Spending through the tax code is somewhat of a typical Republican policy. Tax deductions are quite familiar to higher-income people, but these policies don’t show an understanding of the realities of low-income families’ lives, that require more nuance. I think it’s great that the current president gave attention to this issue and spoke about this issue on the campaign trail, but this plan is really flawed.”

And it’s not just the tax deductions that Morrissey finds problematic about the Trump proposal. She also points to the maternity leave plan, which is for maternity leave only, and not for parental or family leave more broadly.

“This ignores the role that fathers and other parents play in the lives of children,” says Morrissey. “Getting dads involved from Day 1 benefits fathers and children both — we see increased test scores, increased caregiving, and happier dads.”

Not only does a maternity leave-only policy stand to potentially leave out adoptive parents and same-sex parents, Morrissey says, but it also deters companies from hiring women of childbearing age, since they know that only those employees will be able to utilize this benefit. Offering six weeks of partially paid time off is “inadequate,” she says, both for parent-child bonding and for the physical recovery of women after childbirth.

Yet Graszler sees the maternity leave-only policy as a good start, mainly because the proposal is not tied to an employer mandate that could impose additional costs on employers.

She adds, “I think, just like his health care plan, we’re seeing an increase of resources going to the wealthy and a decrease of resources going to low- and middle-income families. This plan would exacerbate income inequality, rather than help reduce income inequality,” Morrissey says.

So what would policies that would help more middle- and low-income families actually look like?

Morrissey say the key is to help families before they reach the point of school entry in kindergarten. She and her co-authors propose up to 16 weeks of partially paid parental leave for all of those with work history (including the self-employed and those at smaller companies traditionally excluded from the Family and Medical Leave Act). In addition, they advocate for guaranteed child care for parents returning to the workforce after the arrival of a child, an income-based subsidy that allows families to choose high-quality care and educational settings, and extending universal pre-K to children starting at the age of 3.

“We know that income-based disparities are present well before kids walk into kindergarten. By starting at age 3 and intervening earlier, that means two years of high-quality, evidence-based curriculums for children before they enter kindergarten, which can really benefit kids — and low-income kids especially,” Morrissey explains.

She continues, “Only by increasing quality can we promote children’s outcomes, and only by paying teachers more and increasing the supply of quality child care workers can we make quality child care more accessible and affordable. We need to allow parents time off from work so they know they can be financially secure — as opposed to having to take unpaid leave or lose their job because they need leave to care for their families. It’s all intertwined. We need to totally reframe the whole focus of the birth through age 5 period in our country.”

So although it’s encouraging to see Trump start the conversation, it seems that his anticipated proposal stands to reinforce the current frame, instead of breaking it open to allow in more American families.

Related: What If Companies Only Did Business With Other Companies That Offer Paid Family Leave?

How Much Will Families Pay for Child Care Under Clinton vs. Trump?

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