The economy has emerged as a key issue in the 2024 presidential race, especially for working parents in need of high-quality, affordable child care.
Nearly 60 percent of children under the age of six in the United States spend time in nonparental care on a regular basis, according to a 2020 report by the Department of Education.
Finding high-quality, affordable childcare can be a struggle for working parents. According to the Council of Economic Advisers, higher-income families spend between 6 percent and 8 percent of their income on child care expenses, while families with low incomes spend as much as 31 percent of their income on child care.
Both Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump support an expansion of the Child Tax Credit.
Harris said she wants to expand the child tax credit up to $3,600 and, for families of newborns, $6,000 for the child’s first year. She proposed the expansion as part of her economic proposal in a speech in North Carolina, which she said aimed to help the middle class.
The plan continues a Biden-Harris Administration Executive Action on Care to lower child care costs for more than 100,000 families.
“The Administration invested over $60 billion from the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act in the care economy, including $39 billion to help child care providers keep their doors open and to provide child care workers with higher pay, bonuses, and other benefits—reducing turnover and attracting new staff,” according to a White House statement.
Christine Mayes, a California mother of two, supports affordable child care for working families but remains concerned about the rise in taxes under a Harris presidency.
“The amount of other taxes that Kamala Harris wants to pass would supersede that child tax return. No thanks!” Mayes told NTD in a statement.
In his first term, Trump doubled the child tax credit to $2,000 per child in his Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and added another $500 credit for older children and other dependents. The 45th president signed it into law in January 2018.
Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, reiterated their position on the expansion of a child tax credit in a recent interview and criticized the Biden-Harris administration when the legislation failed in the Senate despite bipartisan support in the House.
“Well we think it should be bigger,” Vance told Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan. “I think President Trump and I believe in expanded Child Tax Credit. But we also importantly want to actually get this thing done.”
Trump touted in his Aug. 14 economic speech that his goal was to “make America affordable again” for families so they can prosper and thrive. The 2024 GOP platform does not specifically outline how he would tackle child care costs in his second term.