SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
A story first reported by The New York Times was all over the internet this week. The White House is considering giving married couples with one stay-at-home parent money to help raise their children. The proposal fits in with the Trump administration's broader push for traditional family structures. But as NPR's Andrea Hsu reports, the idea of supporting parents who want to stay home, well, that's something Democrats embrace too.
ANDREA HSU, BYLINE: When Tara McGuinness first saw the story about this White House proposal, her first thought was not this is crazy. Instead, it was...
TARA MCGUINNESS: We can do better.
HSU: McGuinness is founder of the New Practice Lab at the left-leaning think tank New America. The problem she has with the White House plan, as reported, is that it would mean more families would be competing for limited childcare subsidies.
MCGUINNESS: The proposal itself takes an existing pot of money that is too small for the folks it serves today...
HSU: Mostly single working parents.
MCGUINNESS: ...And turns it over to a different set of parents.
HSU: Married couples with one parent who's not working. McGuinness thinks that may not even be legal without action from Congress. But the notion that we, as a country, should help with the cost of raising young children, whether the parents are working or not - now, that is something McGuinness stands firmly behind.
MCGUINNESS: I feel we've been really stuck for many, many decades in a kind of false choice about whether families want to take care of their own kids or we should have more publicly available childcare. Like, parents are asking for combinations of both and more flexibility.
HSU: This year, she and her colleagues surveyed thousands of parents, and what they heard was parents want more time with their kids, more money and more agency in how they run their families. Those findings informed a proposal she cowrote for Project 2029. That's a blueprint some Democrats are putting together for a future administration, like Project 2025 was for President Trump.
Under their proposal, parents with kids under 5 could get free childcare outside their home.
MCGUINNESS: Or parents could choose $1,000 a month to put money towards what they need. That might mean, oh, I needed $1,000 to stay home and take care of my own child, or, you know, we got grandma or grandpa or an auntie or a provider that we want to pay on our own.
HSU: Now, that part is not so different from what's reported to be in the White House plan. In fact, Vice President JD Vance pushed something similar two years ago at a Turning Point USA event. He said it should be easier for families to choose whatever model they want.
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JD VANCE: You know, maybe like, grandma or grandpa wants to help out a little bit more, or maybe there's an aunt or uncle that wants to help out a little bit more.
HSU: Of course, the big difference is money. The White House proposal doesn't appear to come with additional funding. Now, the Trump administration did not respond to NPR's questions about the plan. But at an Easter lunch at the White House this year, President Trump said states should be paying for childcare, not the federal government.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We're a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We're fighting wars. We can't take care of daycare.
HSU: Childcare is costly. McGuinness and her colleagues estimate that giving families free childcare or $1,000 a month - that could add up to some $200 billion a year, which is a big number, but...
MCGUINNESS: This is like 2%, 1% of the federal budget.
HSU: And she points out, the U.S. loses that much every year in income, productivity and tax revenue because parents can't afford or can't find childcare. Beyond those arguments, McGuinness hopes that a plan that includes everyone - those who work and those who stay home - could gain traction.
MCGUINNESS: We need to move past the time of pitting some set of parents as deserving or eligible.
HSU: It should be possible for all parents, she says, to raise kids well.
Andrea Hsu, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MARTIN ROTT'S "KINETIC THEORY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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