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Free Childcare! From a Republican!
Donald Trump has figured out suburban women. He is going to guarantee six weeks of paid maternity leave for every new American mom. And if we vote for this compassionate man, we’ll also get tax credits for daycare and the government will help us set up “dependent care savings accounts” to support future generations from cradle to grave. Soon, all our of kids will have trust funds as big as Ivanka’s.
Provide 6 weeks of maternity leave to new mothers – The United States is the only developed country that does not provide cash benefits for new mothers. According to the U.S. Department of Labor: “Only 12 percent of U.S. private sector workers have access to paid family leave through their employer.” Each year, 1.4 million women who work give birth without any paid leave from their employer. The Trump plan will enhance Unemployment Insurance (UI) to include 6 weeks of paid leave for new mothers so that they can take time off of work after having a baby. This would triple the average 2 weeks of paid leave received by new mothers, which will benefit both the mother and the child.
That’s so awesome. Why has no one ever thought of this sort of initiative before? Ummm… wait. They have: They’re called progressive Democrats. And I’m a Republican woman because I have long-spurned policies that sound good but lead to rational discrimination, new entitlements, and exploding debt that will crush future generations.
Look, I understand kids are expensive. I’ve struggled in the past with childcare costs. I actually set up my very own “dependent care savings account” with the spare change I earned as a waitress when I was a young, single mom. (The bills that folded went to bills, you see; nickels and dimes went into the college fund.)
So, how can I explain my reaction to this latest proposal? It’s like when I was handed a New Coke as a kid. “It’s a better formula,” they said as I spat it out onto the sidewalk. I remember thinking that, if I wanted something that tasted like Pepsi, I would have just bought a Pepsi. Is that a hard concept for a businessman to understand?
Just asking.
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Oh, you mean a patsy who created a new government body (the only things that are truly immortal) in response to a fire than burned out so quickly that the news didn’t actually have any pictures of it and just reran photos from when it had caught on fire 17 years earlier? That had managed to catch on fire at least 13 times over the course of 100 years and was actually already getting better before the EPA?
I’m not a Republican because I’m team R. I’m a Republican because I believe in freedom and that the scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” And frankly, I’ll vote for a Martian if he stood and fought for these things, and I wouldn’t vote for the reincarnation of Mother Theresa if she were running as a Republican and didn’t stand for those things.
I’m pretty much with you a thousand percent except for this part…
I mean. Mother Theresa?
I might give her the benefit of the doubt. I could be persuaded, at least, to think much harder about what I’m doing in a “binary election” if she was an option. :D
What’s the point of beating the Democrats if we’re just going to propose Democrat policies?
Watching some of you bend over backwards happily, because Trump has revived warmed over me too Republicanism that hasn’t been seen since Thomas Dewey is getting rather sickening at this point. This nonsense should of stayed in the 30s and 40s where it belonged.
Because then we can be better Democrats! Just like Nixon and Ford and the Bushes and …
To quote @fredcole “Wait, I hear it now …”
I did a quick Google search on the earned income tax credit, and remember something about it being expanded in 1986. That would have been Reagan, right?
The GOP had this debate back when my Grandfather was a young adult. If he was alive today he’d be 96, and here we are watching people defending policies that couldn’t win over the country when he was 28.
I am not sure what you are talking about. My Father is 92, four years younger than your Grandfather. By the time my Dad was 24 and your Grandfather was 28, FDR had enacted the New Deal. I am not sure where you are getting the idea that that period of time was paradise for conservatives; it wasn’t.
Yep, because back then the thought was if we let poor people not have skin in the game and give them welfare we don’t call welfare, they’ll be so grateful for that they’ll keep voting team R. A bit like when William Gladstone expanded the vote to more British men in 1884, hoping to win their votes.
For the record, I’m in favor of a flat tax, which removes all the tinkering and social engineering and distortions that the current nightmarish code contains and encourages. But a tax deduction, while a “subsidy” in the lazy sense is an indirect subsidy, and different from giving me money I did not have before. If letting people keep more of their property is a subsidy, a boon bestowed by the gracious State, then everything I have is theirs, and every year it’s just a question of how much of their property they will allow me to enjoy at my discretion.
But hey: as the man said, “I know it’s not very Republican to say, but you need to help people.” So more programs = a better America.
As for Rubio, he proposed a child tax credit, and the progressives hated it because it wasn’t enough and his tax plan didn’t extend the Earned Income Tax Credit. Forbes:
In effect the Rubio plan would have cut the taxes of low-low income people to the point where more got money back from the government under certain conditions, and that’s a fair criticism if you are opposed to any direct subsidies. But a tax plan that resulted in some getting a subsidy under a uniform set of rules is different than a plan whose intention is to provide a subsidy for all. Again, room for criticism all around, but you have to consider the underlying principles, and whether they lead towards Statism or away from it.
When unemployment insurance rates rise, again, our family business will have several options: stifle wage growth; invest less in the business; reduce the amount of profit. The first is unlikely, given the high demand for labor; the second is usually not an option, if you want to stay competitive. So the third, again, will be the result.
Good thing we got that golden goose out in the shed like all small businesses, laying one egg after the other.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/29/working-class-voters-america-republican
According to the above article, 9 of the ten states with the lowest median income voted for McCain. Large numbers of the working poor do not vote at all, and a significant percentage of them do vote Republican.
Trump is proposing giving new Mothers unemployment benefits for six weeks, paid for by eliminating “fraud”. This is not a tax policy based on the idea of rewarding the lower aspects of the tax base, this is expanding an entitlement program further to take in another class of people that the program was never set up for in the first place. Unemployment benefits was created in over to give households some hold over capital well they searched for employment, but only if the unemployment was the result of situations the employee could not control. It’s suppose to be a safety valve for something that is unforeseen.
Whether you agree with the principle of that idea or not, that is why it was created. It was not created to give new Mothers government handouts for having children. This is the kind of nonsense that has lead to further destruction of the family bond. No longer are couples incentivized to even stay together, and this just adds to that further.
They are further hiding the cost by rewriting the tax code, in other words expanding it further by adding more loopholes, something in opposition to Reagan who simplified the tax code and actually shrunk it in real size.
It’s nothing but a political move to get votes by giving handouts.
The idea Reagan had for the EITC was it was a better kind of welfare program that could lead to eliminating other programs. In other words, as I said earlier Reagan did a lot to simplify the tax code, he eliminated loopholes and outright shrunk the amount of actual tax law. In other words the EITC he pushed was pushed in order to further shrink the size of government, and off setting it by eliminating other welfare hand outs.
So in other words Regan’s defense of the EITC was that he was using it to more easily direct welfare to people who are working and on the lower end of the scale, but he also eliminated other programs that were cumbersome and overbearing on the system. Such programs like the one Trump is now proposing.
It’s similar to Hayek’s idea of a universal minimum income, of Friedman’s Negative Income Tax. It’s a program that solves the welfare problem, by eliminating every other programs and leaving only one that directly works across the board. There are no special interest group hand outs, which is what politicians thrive on to get elected, and what Trump is now promoting in order to get women to vote for him.
@judithanncampbell One thing I like about this website is that people like you take a stick and (gently) poke at the soft spots in a gut reaction and ask for a sturdier stuff.
I said in my first response to you that Republicans have definitely used tax credits in the past, but the Reagan quote used above by another member aligns with my comment on Rubio’s framing of his plans to help parents with kids that strikes me as an important distinction when contrasting to Trump.
Reagan and Rubio both fell back on the idea that government takes a lot from citizens, but if you gave many people back what was actually theirs to begin with, they could solve a lot of their own problems.
Furthermore, there were some people–the working poor–who would require more of a boost with an EITC, but such a thing encouraged them to keep doing what Republicans think is important for them in the grand scheme: work and control their own destiny.
Trump frames his plan with him (and government) as the thing that will create the solution… especially when talking.
I find this to be a distinction with a difference because it tells me a bit more about where he would go with an initiative… how it would actually look when implement… how it would *grow.*
I mean, how one defines how one “helps” really matters in the broad scheme. Does that make sense?
Tyler Boliver: If Trump or any politician started advocating for a minimum income, do you think that idea would be well received? I have no idea about this: I am inclined to be in favor of a minimum income, for all the reasons you site, but are most Americans ready for that idea? I am not sure. It seems to me that Trump is trying to do what is possible right now, while also taking an issue away from liberals. He is also trying to win votes, but who isn’t?
Which of course, never really works, as seen by the continued existence of food stamps, welfare, 99 week “unemployment insurance,” WIC, Obamacare-expanded Medicaid, and now possibly government paid maternity leave. Creating one government program to kill another later works about as well as amnesty now in exchange for border enforcement later, another mistake Saint Ronald made.
@jameslileks @tylerboliver
Yeah. What you two said. :)
Depends on how he advocated it. If he came out in favor of a Negative Income Tax while eliminating every single other welfare program, handout, jobs program, medicare, medicaid and social security – then yes I would be very impressed with the Don’s candidacy.
This is what Milton Friedman advocated, yes? Or am I crossing wires?
Like that would ever happen. People want the welfare checks that they “paid for.” It would just be another program on top of the heap, which might work as a good bribe to the “Feel the Bern” crowd while Republicans crowed about how people will love their new government program and keep electing Team R, just like they did after Medicare Part D.
The last office job I had was at a French company, nationalized by the socialist French government. Women were guaranteed a pretty long maternity leave. When two female sales reps in a row went on leave, I heard the District Manager (a Frenchman) say he would never again hire another woman.
Yes, this makes sense :) I can understand why Trump’s presentation would make some uncomfortatble, but I didn’t hear anything in his proposal that indicated a big government program. then again, I wasn’t listening that closely, and may have missed something :)
That is true, but I’m talking about the reason the policy was implemented. I never said it was a success. Reagan didn’t do it with the sense in mind of expanding the size and scope of the state. It was pushed in order to offset the cost (both real and political) of eliminating special interest group programs.
Yes it is what Friedman advocated.
He definitely made mistakes, and he practiced pragmatic politics in ways that sometimes gave too much ground. But I never wondered much about what he thought about the role of government…. I didn’t question where he stood.
If I am trying to put my finger on what bothers me the most about Donald Trump it is this lack of any ideological center that is familiar to me.
Even if we said this massive entitlement expansion is similar in some respects to anything proposed by Republicans in the past, it is Ivanka’s idea (he says). She’s the one who really cares about it?
I’m not really criticizing the dude for listening to his daughter. He’s just… After every pivot, there’s still nothing much there for me that feels like what I think a Republican is. If he’s not of the Left, I don’t know how to define him.
That’s a problem.
Yeah, I’m not disagreeing with you. Just pointing out that the reason we have to fight on the principle that all government help is inherently bad is that government programs are kudzu — no matter what deal you try to arrange with them, no matter how you try to reform them with market solutions or better technocrats, they will always find the cracks in the stonework to shatter any walls you try to build to keep them in.
I know and I don’t disagree. I do think it’s the best bad idea out there for the problem.
My problem is I don’t see how we’d get it passed well also eliminating every other program. You’d almost have to make it a Constitutional Amendment, that stopped the Congress and President from creating anymore welfare programs beyond the Minimum Income Law itself.
But the GOP is once again on the welfare train to buy votes, so this is all just an academic argument at this point.
That one’s pretty funny since (as you probably already know) a government program introduced this invasive species to Georgia where people have tried to kill it ever since….
If you are interested in Friedman’s Negative Income Tax idea he gives a good illustration of it in one of his “Free to Choose” programs, I personally recommend you watch them all btw.
To me, completely. Far more than Romney, Trump speaks conservatism as a second language. (And one taught by a course on tape, at that.) Listening to his comments on how pro-life people want to punish unwed mothers, for example, sounded an awful lot like Obama giving a funeral oration and saying this female civil rights leader was the Queen Esther to Martin Luther King’s Moses. It’s a gibberish of half-remembered ideas spoken out of ignorance and laziness (though at least Trump wasn’t reading that bit of stupidity in a prepared speech).