Thread: 11 Reasons Trump's Child Care Plan Reeks

Joseph Farah September 15, 2016


Donald Trump’s scheme to get Washington more involved in the rearing of children is a bad idea and an unconstitutional one at that.


It needs to be said, even as I see some so-called “conservatives” praising the initiative.
Let’s count the ways this notion fails the practical and constitutional tests:

• Will tax credits, which amount to subsidies, for child-care costs lower the costs of child care? Of course not. If something is subsidized – like college costs or health-care costs – it will become more expensive. You don’t have to have an economics degree to understand that. It might even help these days not to have one. So costs will skyrocket over time as a new entitlement is born. Since we know entitlements never go away, it’s one more nail in the coffin of solvency for the U.S. government.

• Forcing businesses to pay for six weeks of paid maternity leave hardly represents a career advancement for women. Will businesses be more or less likely to hire women of child-bearing years knowing they will be on the hook for six weeks of paid leave? Not to mention the obvious question: Where in the Constitution of the United States does it remotely hint that such a power is within the federal government’s purview and limited authority?

• Won’t it be deemed discriminatory by the activist federal courts to pay for maternity leave and not paternity leave?

• I thought one of Trump’s key priorities was to simplify the tax code – to get it down to one page or so? When you begin introducing new tax credits like this, you are clearly making the tax code even more lengthy, more intrusive and more burdensome.

• Don’t we believe in the free market, where employers attract the best and the brightest employees by paying better wages and offering a better benefits package? Do we really want to give smaller business more reasons not to hire people because of new burdensome regulations they can’t possibly meet?

• Why do I say a tax credit is, in effect, a subsidy? Two reasons: 1) The federal government borrows nearly a third of what it spends – driving the cumulative deficit between spending and tax revenues to $20 trillion currently. So any additional tax cuts that don’t produce revenue mean, as far as government is concerned, more debt borne by all taxpayers. 2) Close to a third of American wage earners pay no taxes at all. For them, a tax credit means a direct subsidy.

• It’s not only bad, irresponsible and unconstitutional policy for government to create specific subsidies for certain segments of the population, it’s bad for families because it creates greater dependency on government, which is incapable of meeting that obligation even now.

• It’s another form of wealth redistribution – always a bad idea. How is it wealth redistribution? Since only certain citizens benefit, the rest of the population subsidizes – people who do not have children, cannot have children or who have already raised their children without such “benefits.”

• It’s the kind of feel-good social experiment that has been tried over and over again with predictable results – higher costs, more empowerment of government, more dependency on government, less personal responsibility, more government oversight of child rearing, more red tape, more regulation, more growth of government. Aren’t we capable of learning from our past mistakes?

• Is child care by non-parents the best thing for kids? We all know it is often a necessity for young families because of economic conditions and realities. But is it good national policy to encourage, with subsidies, the farming out of children by parents who love their kids?

• There’s so much more, but just let me give you this last consideration: With the threat of losing federal funding, Barack Obama ordered all public schools in the U.S. to accommodate “transgendered” children by allowing them to use any restroom or locker room they preferred. How long do you think it would take Washington’s mad social-engineering “scientists” to insist that “gay” education be mandated in all these pre-K child-care centers once the federal government’s involved?

The trouble is, few people are willing to state the obvious problems inherent with such ideas. They don’t want to be called ogres and meanies and uncompassionate.


I don’t like to be called any of those things either. But what’s wrong with encouraging churches and synagogues to step up to meet this social obligation? Doesn’t that make more sense – matching up people beyond child-bearing years to watch children and pay with them so Mom can work? Isn’t that a better way? Don’t you think there are lots of grandmas and grandpas out there who would love to volunteer time to watch young kids run around and have fun and learn?


What is wrong with us in this country that we believe only the federal government can really fix problems and answer needs – when it has never demonstrated any ability to fix any problems or answer any needs?
This critique is not meant to single out Trump as a dummy, by any means. His view is shared by the vast majority of Americans, I’m sure. It’s certainly shared by most politicians – Democrats and Republicans alike.
But I thought Donald Trump was different. I thought he was going to shake up the establishment in Washington. This plan suggests we’re not going to turn around business-as-usual thinking in Washington just by electing Trump – though I will be voting for him enthusiastically, given the unthinkable, unimaginable, destructive, cataclysmic, disastrous alternative.




http://www.wnd.com/2016/09/11-reason...re-plan-reeks/