Highlights about Hillary’s Family Plan:
- Cap Child care cost at 10% of family income. Finance the rest with a combination of subsidized child care and tax credits
- make pre-K Kindergarten free for all 4-year olds
- Boost Pay to Child-Care workers
- double the Early Head Start Child Care Partnership grant program and double the investment in Early Head Start.
- Strongly bolster funding for “home visiting” program designed to help low-income children at risk of emotional, intellectual, and physical harm.
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NY Mag discusses Hillary’s plan to cap child care cost at 10%.
The above video is the entire child care discussion from yesterday’s campaign stop in Lexington, KY
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On the campaign trail yesterday in the still-contested primary election, would-be Democratic-presidential-nominee Hillary Clinton unveiled part of what could be a monumental new child-care plan for the United States.
Speaking at a campaign stop in Lexington, Kentucky, Clinton said that child-care expenses should be "capped" at 10 percent of a family's income. She also said that child-care workers' wages should be increased using a combination of state and federal funding. Though no details have been announced, the plan is ambitious and would, if implemented, represent a landmark step in making life just a little bit easier for working parents.
This is a practical solution to a big problem for parents everwhere. Child care costs are making life very difficult for parents, put a lot of pressure on two-income households. Sometimes a partner can’t even choose to have a career because health care costs are staggering and almost make going to work cost-prohibitive. For example, a couple with two small children in my part of the world (Tampa, FL) can expect to pay around $2,000 a month in child care costs. For many it is hardly worth going to a daily job to just to pay out $2,000 a month for child care cost.
“That ought to be just a rule," Clinton said of the 10 percent limit, "and you ought to get help if you’re getting close to that or going above that.” Reports vary on what the average family pays for child care, and those costs vary widely based on where one lives, but it's estimated that some families, such as those in the state of Oregon, spend nearly 19 percent of their income on child care. Infant care is often the most expensive, and requires the most highly trained child-care workers.
In the U.S., where most mothers work and few have access to paid leave, it's a relief to see the national conversation incorporating these issues — even if doing so is supposedly playing the "woman card."
Hillary’s proposals for paid family leave and capping child care costs at 10% of family income will help struggling families make ends meet and have a happier, healthier family life.
Also chiming in on Hillary’s emerging plans for families was Johnathan Cohn from the Huffington Post:
The most concrete part of the agenda, first reported by The Huffington Post, is a pair of narrow but potentially important proposals. One would bolster a highly regarded “home visiting” program designed to help low-income children at risk of emotional, intellectual, and physical harm. If Clinton has her way, the program, known as the Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting Initiative, would reach twice as many children as it does today.
The other initiative would seek to boost pay for child-care workers, as a way to improve retention and attract educators with stronger qualifications. Clinton will call this the RAISE initiative, for “Respect And Increased Salaries for Early Childhood Educators,” and it will be based on successful pilot programs now operating in several states.
As Cohn added, Clinton also intends to cap family expenses for child care at 10% of annual income. When costs exceed this limit, Clinton “would use a combination of subsidized child care and tax credits.”
“It’s time to face up to the reality of what family life is like today and to support families,” Clinton said at a Lexington-based social-services center.
The New Republic added, “The plan closely resembles a policy proposal published last fall by the left-leaning Center for American Progress, which has close ties to the Clinton campaign. Earlier in the primaries, Hillary also called for universal pre-kindergarten education that would make preschool available to every 4-year-old in the country.”
Trump?
The punch-line, however, comes when comparing Clinton’s plan to her Republican rival’s approach to the same issue.
In November, Trump hosted an event in Iowa, where a woman asked him what he would do as president to provide workers, especially working mothers, with more access to affordable child care. The Washington Post reported at the time:
Donald Trump doesn’t understand why so few companies provide affordable, in-house child care for their employees like he does at some of his companies.
“It’s not expensive for a company to do it,” Trump said during a town hall at a community college in this small town on Thursday afternoon. “You need one person or two people, and you need some blocks and you need some swings and some toys. You know, surely, it’s not expensive. It’s not an expensive thing. I do it all over, and I get great people because of it… It’s something that can be done, I think, very easily by a company.”
Oh. So Hillary Clinton’s plan involves a “home visiting” program, improved pay for child-care workers through a RAISE initiative, and a cap on child-care expenses through subsidized child care and tax credits.
Trump’s plan involves some blocks and some swings.
Let the debate begin.
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Trump proposes adding some swings and a few blocks to deal with family’s “care” issues. The “debate" on family issues between Hillary and Trump can't get here soon enough. It will be an eye opener for families everywhere.
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Hillary’s child care plan, explained on Hillary’s web site:
Millions of families can’t afford to care for their children. It’s time to change that.
Hillary Clinton has pledged to lead an effort that will ensure no family pays more than 10 percent of their income on quality child care. And that’s a big deal, because many families in America are spending more than one third of their income on child care.
Quality child care during early childhood is one of the most important investments a parent can make in their child’s future, but the cost of child care in America has been rising for decades: Between 2000 and 2012, child care costs rose by nearly 25 percent. But wages have remained stagnant—meaning the cost of child care is putting an even bigger strain on families.
In 27 states and the District of Columbia, the annual cost of infant child care is higher than a year’s in-state college tuition and fees at a public university.
And while child care costs continue to rise, more and more families rely on care. In more than 60 percent of households with children under six, all parents (single or married) are working.
The 4.8 million parents who are also students face high child care costs on top of rising tuition costs.
Hillary will fight to make sure every family in America has access to high quality, affordable child care. She will:
- Create an initiative that provides funding and support to communities that pay child care workers for the true value of their worth.
- Provide home visiting services to more than 2 million parents and children in the next 10 years.
- Increase federal funding to bring down the cost of child care for low-income families.
- Provide tax relief to help lower costs for working families.
- Double funding for the Early Head Start–Child Care partnership program.
“ The parents I’ve met over the past few days and parents that I’ve met over the past many years may come from different backgrounds, they may earn different incomes ... but they’re facing the same challenges ... It shouldn’t be about politics. It should be about families.”
— Hillary, May 10, 2016