Economist Says Trump’s Childcare Plan ‘Full of Holes’ and ‘Makes Absolutely No Sense’

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Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:11 pm

Hillary Clinton’s senior policy adviser, Maya Harris, said Trump’s vaunted child care plan as “half-baked,” and she is far from alone: The chief economist for the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, Austen Goolsbee of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, took to Fox News’ The Kelly File to say of Trump’s plan,

“This is a policy which, if you had spent more than ten minutes working on it, you would realize that there were huge holes.”

The thing is, Goolsbee says Trump’s campaign didn’t spend even 10 minutes working on it. You can look at Trump’s fact sheet here (you can compare it to Clinton’s plan here).

Watch courtesy of Media Matters for America:

“This is a policy which, if you had spent more than ten minutes working on it, you would realize that there were huge holes. But they apparently didn’t spend that. So first, it’s not a maternity leave policy that should be called “paid maternity leave.” It’s not based on what your income was. In many states, the maximum’s going to be over $1,000 a month. And second, who pays for it are the newly unemployed. He’s taking the money out of unemployment insurance and diverting it to the maternity leave. It absolutely makes no sense.”

Speaking in Pennsylvania, Trump claimed of his so-called “Child Care Affordability Plan,” that, “It’s pro-family, it’s pro-child, it’s pro-worker. These are the people we have to take care of,” even though it really only takes care of people making more than $500K/year.

His daughter Ivanka, who has nothing in common with most women but is supposed to be Trump’s access to women voters, said “we need to create policies that champion all parents” but this isn’t one of those policies; some parents are to be championed more than others.

It’s not all Ivanka’s fault. As Libby Nelson over at Vox explains, “Trump’s plan shows his daughter’s influence” but it also shows “his disinterest in policy details.”

As Vivien Labaton, co-executive director of the nonpartisan Make It Work Action (MIWA), put it,

“His childcare proposal is really designed for the Ivanka Trump’s of the country than the working families who need help.”

Trump says Clinton has no plan. His plan claims in boldface letters and baldfaced lies, “Donald J. Trump’s Plan Is More Complete Than Hillary Clinton’s Plan.” But it’s not.

As tweeted by the Clinton campaign’s The Briefing, “Like most of Trump’s plans, the details of his paid leave proposal aren’t serious.”

If you are beginning to get the feeling that you’re living through a television reality series about somebody campaigning for president, television writers are usually better at creating a believable setting, and more realistic policy proposals.

Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) claims Trump’s plan “allows families to balance work and parenting while maintaining conservative principals.” This is true: you can have a job and have no better child care options than you do now.

You can tell she’s a member of Paul Ryan’s all-talk-no-action House of Representatives.

In every respect, Donald Trump’s child care plan falls short. Not only compared to Hillary Clinton’s much more well-thought-out plan, but just plain short, in that it isn’t designed to help all Americans. Just the Ivanka Trumps of the world.

White nationalist Lou Dobbs is really happy Ivanka Trump will get access to child care. He is so happy that he says of Trump’s child care plan that “@realDonaldTrump seems a candidate of destiny.”

Trump’s plan absolutely makes no sense, said Austen Goolsbee, and he is right. Like so much else about the Trump campaign, it’s all sleight of hand, a con job to fool the gullible into casting a vote for him.

Photo: Screen capture, NBC News

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Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen's Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.

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