Presidential candidate Donald Trump announced his child care plan yesterday. Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s a marvel of misogyny and shows no awareness of LGBTQ families.
Trump said Wednesday that his plan would “provide 6 weeks of paid-maternity leave to any mother with a newborn child whose employer does not provide the benefit.” Maternity leave. Not paternity leave. That leaves dads—whether straight, gay, or bi, and single, partnered, or married—out of luck. And who knows how a Trump administration would handle trans parents?
It’s unclear, too, if his plan means a two-mom family would get six weeks of leave per mom—which would be nice, but seems unfair compared to what other families would receive.
Furthermore, Trump’s use of “newborn” in his speech yesterday implies that adoptive mothers, particularly ones adopting older children, would not get any parental leave. The campaign’s Fact Sheet about the plan does not specify “newborn” and says nothing about adoption, so that remains uncertain—but Ivanka Trump told Cosmopolitan, “the original intention of the plan is to help mothers in recovery in the immediate aftermath of childbirth.”
Hillary Clinton’s plan offers 12 weeks of leave for any new parent, regardless of gender.
Trump’s plan to let families making less than $250,000 per year deduct the costs of child care from their taxes also does little to help those who most need it. As Simon Maloy explained at Salon, “People who need the most help affording child care — poor and low-income families — frequently don’t have any federal income tax burden. If they’re already paying zero dollars in federal income tax, an extra deduction won’t do them any good; they’ll still be paying zero dollars.”
And Jeanne Sahadi of CNN Money notes that low-income parents have to pay for child care throughout the year, so waiting until tax time may be too late to help. Clinton, in contrast, says she will reform the child care system so that most families will pay no more than 10 percent of their income on child care, and will fund this through taxes on the wealthy.
Whether these deductions would help same-sex couples of even somewhat higher incomes is also questionable. Trump’s Fact Sheet asks the question, “Will Same-Sex Couples Receive The Benefits?” and answers, “The benefits would be available in the same way that the IRS currently recognizes same-sex couples: if the marriage is recognized under state law, then it is recognized under federal law.”
That’s disingenuous. Trump wants to overturn national marriage equality and leave marriage to the states. I’m not a tax attorney or an accountant, so I don’t know what the impact would be in terms of child care deductions and benefits, and I suspect it would depend on any given couple’s respective incomes—but it’s inequality, regardless.
The Washington Post and Moms Rising, among others, have done further comparisons of Trump’s and Clinton’s plans. Expect more analysis in the weeks to come—but realize which campaign is more inclusive of all parents.
