Trump’s Half-Baked Policies Leave 21st Century Families Behind
Today, Hillary for America’s senior policy advisor Maya Harris responded to Donald Trump’s new proposals:
“With 56 days left in this campaign, Donald Trump has finally decided to talk policy and it’s everything we’ve expected it to be: out of touch, half-baked, and ignoring the way Americans live and work today. His ‘maternity leave’ plan is demeaning and damaging as it’s only available to women, not sufficient to provide support to working families and paid for by raiding unemployment insurance. His so-called child care plan could only be the brainchild of someone living in the penthouse of Trump Tower, leaving millions of middle class and working families with no support or pennies on the dollar while carving out a regressive tax break to pay for nannies and private schools. The choice could not be more clear between Hillary Clinton’s comprehensive paid family leave and childcare plans geared toward the needs of 21st century families and Donald Trump’s 11th hour giveaway to wealthy families like himself.”
On the other hand, Hillary Clinton’s comprehensive child care plan and a family leave plan put children and working families first.
Here are three key take-aways from his maternity leave plan: 1. Trump’s plan would not provide enough support to working families for them to actually afford forgoing wages and taking time off. Trump admits that under his maternity leave plan, a woman would receive “much less” than her “regular paycheck.” Unlike comprehensive and effective paid family leave proposals, Trump’s plan does not guarantee workers a portion of their wages while on leave, rather workers would receive an undefined percentage of unemployment insurance. In Florida, for example, this means a mother would only receive, at most, $275 per week.
2. Trump’s proposal only covers women, which is both demeaning and harmful. Trump’s plan casts women as the sole child caretaker and actually encourages employers to discriminate against women. Studies have shown that providing paid leave to new mothers, but not to new fathers, negatively affects women’s return to the workplace, can discourage employers from hiring or promoting female employees, and can increase the gender pay-gap. By only providing leave to new mothers, Trump’s plan also undercuts working dads, including gay couples and single-fathers.
3. Trump’s plan is paid for on the backs of Americans most in need of support: those who have recently lost their job. By cutting unemployment insurance to pay for his proposal - rather than asking the wealthy to pay their fair share - Trump would put working families at risk. Trump’s false claims to the contrary, Hillary’s plan to actually provide working families paid family and medical leave is fully paid for by making the wealthy pay their fair share and puts no additional costs on businesses.
Here are three key take-aways from his child care plan:
The example family that Trump cites might not actually benefit from his plan: For example, Trump’s plan states “For a family earning $70,000 per year in the 12 percent tax bracket with $7,000 in child care expenses, the deduction would reduce taxes by $840 per year.” However, this family could likely get a tax credit of $1,200 under the current law Child and Dependent Care Credit if they have two kids - meaning the family Trump is citing does not appear to benefit from Trump’s own plan.
- Close to 80% of families might, at most, get only four cents on the dollar – and millions of these families could very well get nothing. </strong>As Trump clarified in a new fact sheet about his plan, Trump’s new plan requires “no double dipping” with “benefits already provided for child care expenses.” Under current law, working families are already eligible for a 20% (or higher) tax credit for child care expenses. Since families can’t “double dip,” the 76% of families (around 38 million in total) in the 15% tax bracket or below might not benefit at all from Trump’s plan. That’s because the 20% they can deduct under current law is higher than the amount they could deduct against their tax bracket under Trump’s proposal. And at best, the families within this category that don’t take advantage of the existing credit, would likely get a paltry 4 cents on the dollar from Trump’s plan (up to half of payroll tax expenses).
- Trump’s plan could actually bring down the quality of childcare for working families.By making child care less expensive for wealthy families, while doing close to nothing for millions of middle class Americans, Trump’s plan could actually increase economic segregation by family income in the child care setting. Decades of early learning research shows the negative impact of such segregation on children. 3. Trump’s plan creates a new, regressive tax break for expensive nannies, and other spending for the most fortunate.The highest-earning families, like millionaires in the top bracket, could deduct 40 cents on the dollar for spending on private schools, nannies and other expenses they don’t need a tax break for. For example, a high-income family putting $2,000 into a savings account would get almost a $800 tax break. A middle-class family who put in $2,000 might only get $300 if they were in the 15% tax bracket. And even lower-income families eligible for a match would get less than the highest earning families. Reviews of the plan are in: Esquire: Why Donald Trump's New Child-Care Plan Is a Joke “Donald Trump's track considers breastfeeding—and Hillary Clinton's bathroom breaks—’disgusting.’ It thinks a woman's opinion is disqualified if she has ‘blood coming out of her wherever.’ In 1994, Trump said, ‘Putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing.’ In 2004, Trump said a pregnant employee was ‘certainly an inconvenience for a business.’ Trump's been barreling down that darkly lit tunnel for years. Then, when convenient, he flips on his high beams for a few seconds.” Quartz: Trump’s childcare and maternity leave policy is unlike his actual treatment of and statements about women “Once, a lawyer who was deposing Trump in a lawsuit over a failed real estate venture asked for a medical break to pump breastmilk for her 3-month-old baby. Trump and his lawyers insisted the deposition go on. When she put her pump on the table, Trump said to her ‘You’re disgusting,’ and stormed out of the session. In 1994, Trump famously compared his wives to buildings, and said he had mixed feelings about them working.” Vox: Donald Trump’s plan to fund a paid family leave program is totally absurd “Hillary Clinton’s plan to offer 12 weeks of leave at two-thirds of a worker’s previous salary would cost $300 billion over 10 years. Even assuming Trump’s is much less generous, offering six weeks instead of 12 and a smaller fraction of salary, there isn’t enough unemployment fraud in the United States to come close to paying for it.” CAP: Don’t Be Fooled by Trump’s Smoke and Mirrors on Child Care and Paid Leave “Unfortunately, Trump’s latest attempt to appeal to everyday workers is a new coat of paint on a tired message. Wealthy people like Trump and his children benefit the most, while working parents struggle to make ends meet. At face value, Trump’s plans appear to address the lack of paid leave and growing cost of child care. But when you look beneath the surface, these plans do not actually support working families. Trump announced four proposals.” Salon: Trump’s child-care policy: A combination of the useless and the inadequate “Donald Trump will stop by Aston, Pennsylvania, this evening to lay out a more fully developed version of the child-care policy he teased about last month. Going by early indications, it looks like the Republican’s proposal is a mix of useless and inadequate policies that won’t really fix the problem of wildly expensive child care.” Huffington Post: Donald Trump Just Radically Broke With Republicans On Maternity Leave; But his proposal may actually lead to increased discrimination against women. “By limiting this benefit to mothers, Trump is inadvertently incentivising employers to discriminate against women, said Carmel Martin, a vice-president for policy at the Center for American Progress. ‘Conservative economists have acknowledged that limiting benefits to mothers creates an incentive for employment discrimination and an increased gender wage gap,’ she said.”
NEW WEB AD: Trump’s Foundation: Corrupt Politics
Today, Hillary for America is launching a new web ad on Donald Trump’s illegal political contribution to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi prior to her office’s decision not to investigate his Trump University.
That donation made out of Trump’s charitable foundation is part of a larger pattern of pay-to-play behavior Trump has exhibited throughout this life, which he has bragged about repeatedly.
WATCH: Trump’s Foundation: Corrupt Politics
Here’s a refresher on the pay-to-play scandal:
As Vox reported today, the Trump Foundation has “been good for his personal business and political aspirations and appears to have no particular philanthropic mission or focus.”
The Trump Foundation shows the public what real life pay-to-play looks like: Bondi declined to investigate Trump University – Donald Trump’s get-rich-quick scheme that bilked more than 5,000 students out of $40 million – after soliciting a $25,000 donation from Donald Trump. Then, Trump held a fundraiser for Bondi. But that’s not all. Last week, Yahoo published a bombshell report revealing that Trump’s charitable foundation gave $100,000 to a conservative activist organization that sued New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, potential retribution for taking legal action against Trump University.
This weekend, the Washington Post published a devastating exposé on the Trump Foundation highlighting how, among other things, Trump used $20,000 of his charity’s fund to purchase a 6-foot tall painting of himself.
And just yesterday, Schneiderman said his office is investigating the Trump Foundation out of concern it “may have engaged in some impropriety,” and members of the House Judiciary Committee called on the Department of Justice to “investigate allegations of criminal misconduct” surrounding the Foundation’s donation to Bondi.
There is only one serious, qualified candidate in this race.
