(LifeSiteNews) – The Trump administration is considering a plan to make stay-at-home mothers eligible for federal subsidies originally intended to pay for daycare services, sparking a debate over the weekend between fiscal conservatives and “MAGA” populists.
The New York Times first reported the details of the proposal on Saturday. The foundation is the Child Care & Development Fund, a longstanding Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Administration for Children & Families (ACF) fund established in the 1990s to give low-income and working parents approximately $9,000 per child (up to age 13) annually for daycare. Qualifying parents must have an income below 85 percent of their state’s median income.
The proposed rule, said to be a priority of Vice President JD Vance, would modify the fund’s eligibility rules so that low-income married couples with one stay-at-home parent would also qualify.
“Young children are clearly happier and healthier when they spend the day at home with a parent,” Vance has said, adding that “normal Americans” want to see “family policy that doesn’t shunt their kids into crap day care so they can enjoy more ‘freedom’ in the paid labor force.”
“It would be a welcome change to see equal treatment between commercial day care and the contribution stay-at-home parents provide in caring for and raising the next generation,” said Roger Severino, vice president of the Heritage Foundation, which proposed the idea in its Project 2025 agenda blueprint. “It doesn’t get more pro-family than that.”
Conservatives and Republicans are largely united on the importance of the family and of stay-at-home mothers, leading many to enthusiastically embrace the proposal as outside-the-box thinking that uses the existing structure to promote healthier societal trends, as well as head off looming demographic challenges by making it easier to have children. They have also argued that, because repealing the fund is politically unrealistic and the money is being spent anyway, it might as well be directed to recipients more aligned with conservatives.
Other conservatives, meanwhile, have predicted $9,000 a year per child won’t be enough to cancel out foregoing a full-time job, argued that similar policies have failed to reverse population decline in countries like Hungary and Japan, and warned that expanding the fund’s appeal to constituencies perceived as more GOP-aligned will lay the foundation for spending even more in the future and further erode support for reining in welfare spending as America’s $40 trillion national debt continues to grow.
This debate may be moot, however, as it remains to be seen if the proposed change survives legal scrutiny. The fund was established by an act of Congress, not executive action, with its purpose and eligibility criteria established in statute. Americans for Prosperity fiscal policy fellow Kurt Couchman notes that “federal officials are explicitly and repeatedly barred from adding to statutory rules.”
Regardless, the White House hopes the proposal will win it some goodwill from voters in a challenging midterm election year, particularly on cost-of-living issues. Just 35 percent of Americans approve of President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy, and Republicans are currently projected to lose both the Senate and the House of Representatives.