Donald and Ivanka Trump Dependent Care Plan
I am hearing some VERY sloppy arguments on talk radio about Donald and Ivanka Trump's new plan to help with child care and working families.
Arguments like, Your grandparents and their parents didn't have these benefits so why should you?
Well, our great grand parents had an economy where almost all moms were married and one income could easily support a family AND jobs were plentiful. None of this is true today.
Now wages for falling, 94 million Americans are out of full time work and government corruption and largess is driving wealth over seas.
The plan is in four parts:
1 - Establish something akin to a medical savings account that can roll over tax deferred savings for the care of dependents either old or young. A $2000 per year Dependent Care Savings Accounts that can roll over. This will mean several hundred more dollars a family can use per year per dependent.
2 - New tax credits for businesses that provide quality child care. Because of the single mom epidemic and other factors, mothers missing work costs billions to our economy in lost productivity every year. In short, not doing this before is stupid and inexcusable.
3 - Change current federal regulations that discourage informal child care. Again, this should have been done a long time ago.
4 - Finally, under the Trump plan, the government will guarantee six weeks of paid maternity leave from the two weeks it is today. This will be done by amending the existing unemployment insurance that companies are required to carry.
The fourth is the most controversial for conservatives, but the simple truth is that regulatory reform in other areas of out 176,000 page code of federal regulations should help make up for this, as well as simplification of the tax code and the lowering of the corporate income tax rate. Some are going on as if the plan is controversial and in truth it is quite modest.