When Donald Trump spoke to the Economic Club of New York on Thursday, his response to a question about child care generated headlines in outlets from CNN to The New York Times to The Associated Press. Most of the coverage focused on the rambling nature of Trump’s answer, but most also noted that he expressed support for making child care more affordable.
But the former president’s assertion that “you have to have it” clashed with some of his principal actions on child care while he was in the Oval Office. In fact, throughout his presidency, Trump proposed significant reductions to spending on child care and early childhood education programs, as well as aid to low-income families.
In 2019, Trump proposed a $29 billion cut over 10 years to Head Start, the federally funded program that provides child care to millions of low-income families — a 25% reduction. The proposal was rejected by Congress, which ended up passing bills that included a $550 million increase for Head Start
Trump’s 2018 budget also proposed cuts to child care and early childhood education, including reducing the budget for Head Start by $85 million. That proposal also included $95 million in cuts to discretionary funding for child care and development block grants, which help low-income families afford child care. In addition, Trump proposed undoing an Obama-era rule that lengthened the minimum Head Start day from three and a half hours to six hours, a reversal that was later adopted. Those proposals were rejected by Congress, which passed bills that included a $200 million increase in funding for Head Start and a $50 million increase in the Child Care and Development Block Grant.
In 2019, Trump proposed a $29 billion cut over 10 years to Head Start, the program that provides child care to millions of low-income families.
Trump’s budget proposal was denounced at the time by the Children’s Defense Fund advocacy group, which said that it “declares war on children and working people struggling to support their families by ignoring even their most basic needs and gives trillions to those who do not need massive government support — especially at a time of record wealth and income inequality.”
Trump’s 2020 budget sought exponentially larger cuts to government spending to support poor families — including a reduction of $21 billion over 10 years to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which provides cash payments to millions of low-income families with children. But those changes were not implemented and the TANF budget remained unchanged.
When asked for comment, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, “The cost of childcare has increased 32% for the average family since Kamala Harris has been in the White House. Hardworking families are struggling to buy basic groceries, diapers, and baby formula for their children. In President Trump’s first term, he prioritized expanded access to childcare and paid family leave, and he will do it again in his second term, while also implementing an economic agenda that will make America Affordable Again for working families.”
Trump’s record of proposals on child care and family assistance raises questions about what he would do in a second term. This concern is underscored by the call to eliminate Head Start in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s policy blueprint designed to guide the former president if he returns to power. Though Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, it is staffed almost entirely with veterans of his administration. And some of its child care proposals echo those supported by Trump during his presidency.
Eliminating Head Start would force families that use the program to spend almost $12,000 a year more on child care, according to the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan policy institute. It would significantly affect rural counties in states such as South Dakota and Mississippi, where Head Start programs represent 24% to 59% of child care providers. In addition, Project 2025 proposed to increase work requirements for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
Child Care on the Campaign Trail
Trump’s off-the-cuff comments on child care have elevated an issue that ordinarily doesn’t garner much press attention but is a top concern for Americans. A vast majority of voters believe that access to affordable child care is a priority for them, with 86% of respondents to a survey by the First Five Years Fund advocacy group saying that improving the quality and affordability of child care and early learning programs is a good investment of taxpayer money.
Many experts agreed. “Without more federal funding, you’ll see more inequity in child care,” said Melissa Boteach, vice president for income security and child care/early learning at the National Women’s Law Center.
Trump’s 2018 budget proposal was denounced by the Children’s Defense Fund, which said that it “declares war on children and working people struggling to support their families.”
Child care has been a central plank of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ agenda, and she has eagerly touted her efforts during the administration of President Joe Biden to institute paid family leave and to increase federal funding for child care costs. On the campaign trail, Harris has emphasized her intention to give families of newborns a $6,000 tax credit while increasing the child tax credit for all other eligible families.
In the current race, Trump has hardly mentioned the topic outside his comments last week. As president, he took credit for doubling the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000 and making a greater share of that credit refundable.
Yet the benefits largely bypassed many children. “An estimated 10 million children — those in families with the lowest incomes, including families whose earner works full-time at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour — received either an increase of up to $75 or no increase,” according to the Brookings Institution.
In December 2019, Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump convened a bipartisan group of lawmakers and governors at the White House to talk about a “historic chance” to pass paid family leave and child care reform. “No mother should have to choose between staying at home with her infant and being fired from her job,” she said. But that proposal — which relied on a controversial funding mechanism that would have used recipients’ Social Security benefits — was never implemented amid the chaos of the pandemic.
During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump proposed three tax benefits for child care: a credit for low-income families, an above-the-line deduction and tax-subsidized savings accounts. Though the initiatives were praised for prioritizing the issue, a University of Chicago study found that “they are a case study in how not to reform child care policy.” Researchers concluded that the benefits “are unduly complicated, arbitrarily exclude certain low-income families, deliver support well after child care payments are due, and provide the largest benefits to higher-income families who need the least help.”
In 2023 the average cost of center-based child care for two children was higher than the average annual rent in all 50 states.
Boteach said that the Trump administration “made pledges to make child care more affordable, but we didn’t see follow-through on adequate resources for the child care sector.”
Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, has proposed increasing the child tax credit to $5,000, announcing the plan last month, just two weeks after his former Republican colleagues in the Senate killed a bill that would have expanded the credit (Vance was not present for the vote). It’s not clear how committed Vance is to the proposal, which isn’t part of the Republican Party’s platform.
The day before Trump’s appearance at the Economic Club of New York, Vance was asked at a conference of the conservative group Turning Point how he planned to lower child care costs. In response, he said that parents should ask a grandparent or “aunt or uncle” to help out and suggested that certification requirements for child care workers should be eased.
Child Care Costs ‘Untenable’ for Families
The cost of child care, which increased 5.6% in 2023, rose at a rate that exceeded inflation and prompted the U.S. Labor Department recently to describe the expense as “untenable for families.” Indeed, in 2023 the average cost of center-based child care for two children was higher than the average annual rent in all 50 states, according to a May report by the nonprofit Child Care Aware of America.
The burden fell disproportionately on low-income families, who were more likely than higher-income families to give up work hours to care for their children, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. It concluded this year that the high cost of child care had negative effects on the labor force: “Access to affordable care increases parental labor supply, implying that there are parents who want to work but cannot due to lack of available or affordable care.”
And access to child care had an enormous effect on child development. “Several key studies have shown that providing families that have low socioeconomic status access to high-quality, affordable child care before children reach age 5 can buffer early learning gaps and improve long-term academic, social, economic, and health outcomes,” the Center for American Progress reported.
