Excerpts
A question lobbed from the stage of the Economic Club of New York on Thursday about what, if anything, he would do about the cost of child care should have been right in former President Donald J. Trump’s wheelhouse.
But instead of a crisp, camera-ready reply from a seasoned three-time presidential candidate, Mr. Trump unspooled two of the most puzzling minutes of his campaign.
His answer was a jolting journey through disjointed logic about how the size of his tariffs would take care of all the nation’s children, which only raised a new, more complicated question about why he remains unable to provide straightforward answers about policies he would prioritize in a second term.
“Well, I would do that,” he said when asked if he would commit to supporting legislation to make child care more affordable, and how he would seek to do so.
...
Mr. Vance, like Mr. Trump, acknowledged that the issue of affordable child care was “such an important question.” But his initial answer was that parents should get help from grandparents or aunts and uncles.
“Maybe Grandma and Grandpa wants to help out a little bit more,” Mr. Vance said.
But many parents cannot rely on help from relatives — and many relatives are not in a position to help with someone else’s children. Mr. Vance seemed to acknowledge that conundrum, and pivoted to calling for fewer regulations on child-care providers, falsely saying that child-care specialists were required to have “a six-year college degree.”
“Americans are much poorer because they’re paying out the wazoo for day care,” Mr. Vance said. “Empower working families. Empower people who want to do these things for a living, and that’s what you’ve got to do.”
...
Ms. Harris has called for restoring and expanding a child tax credit and proposed a new $6,000 benefit for parents of newborns. Her child tax credit proposal would increase the maximum to $3,600 per child, up from $2,000 now.
Joseph Costello, a Harris campaign spokesman, said in a statement that the tariffs Mr. Trump is proposing as part of his “‘plan’ for making child care more affordable” would raise costs on middle-class families. “The American people deserve a president who will actually cut costs for them, like Vice President Harris’s plan to bring back a $3,600 child tax credit for working families and an expanded $6,000 tax cut for families with newborn children.”
...