Now that Massachusetts Democrat senator Elizabeth Warren has made official her candidacy for the 2020 presidential elections, she conveyed clearly that her political agenda will be on the side of the working class. One of her major plans is to make childcare affordable to everyone, and to do this, she aims to raise government subsidy funds by taxing the multimillionaires.
Childcare is one of the important financial burdens that middle and low-income families cannot do without if both parents have to work. They can do without child care amenities like the best convertible car seat; or even for that matter, do without a car. According to Moody’s statistical analysis, childcare costs eat up as much as 10% of the family’s income, and more often than, it is not even spent on quality day care services.
Most daycare centers in America is wanting in quality, a fact established by a government survey conducted in 2007. The same findings were gathered by political journalist Jonathan Cohn who reported that the
“overall childcare quality in the U.S. is wildly uneven and barely monitored, and at the lower end.”
Depending on the U.S. state in which a working class family resides, daycare centers are usually scarce. If quality is a criterion, a family will be shelling out more than the amount paid for public university tuition.
Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Vision of Affordable Childcare
Affordable child care, as Senator Warren envisions, will be provided through a network of government regulated facilities that will care for children below schooling age. Since the U.S. government will subsidize the cost of running such facilities, the amount that a family pays will be based on what they can afford.
Senator Warren’s proposed childcare scheme will see families acquiring facility services free of charge. That is if their income is less than 200 percent of the federal poverty benchmark. In cases where parents have higher earnings, they will be required to pay in amounts not exceeding 7% of their income; still way below than what most are currently incurring as childcare costs.
The plan is to allocate government subsidies to states, cities or towns, to non-profit organizations, schools and other local support, by way of federal grants. Money will then be used to create a network of quality caring options available to every type of family.
Albeit ambitious, turning this vision into a reality will encourage housewives to take on work. As it is, most women are constrained to simply stay home. Yet in the senator’s 2004 book, “The Two-Income Trap,” the plan is not to put pressure on mothers preferring to stay home and care for her brood.
After all, the mother is still the best provider of excellent caring, nurturing and rearing of a child. Although not yet incorporated in the Senator’s policy proposal, a single-income household will be incentivized by way of tax credits if a mother prefers not to join the workforce.