EXCLUSIVE: Pence group knocks Vance plan to pay stay-at-home parents up to $9K per child
Vance wants $9,000 for the parent at home. Pence's group called it an audit on the family.
Summary
- Fox News reports Advancing American Freedom, founded by former Vice President Mike Pence, released a one-page memo urging conservatives to oppose a Vice President JD Vance plan to let stay-at-home parents draw up to $9,000 per child a year from the Child Care and Development Fund.
- CCDF, created in the Clinton years, now pays about $9,000 per child annually, typically straight to childcare providers. Vance's draft would let a married couple qualify if one spouse stays home and the other works at least 35 hours a week. Unmarried couples and non-working single parents would not be eligible.
- AAF President Tim Chapman said parenting is the hardest job and Vance is right to focus on the family, but that this design would open families to government audits, benefit cliffs, dependency, and new work disincentives.
- AAF said roughly 870,000 families already receive the aid, 80 percent of them single parents, mostly mothers, and that nearly one-third of states already have waitlists. Expanding the pool, the group warned, would create more competition for a fund already stretched thin.
Commentary
A Dayton dad still smells baby formula on a night-shift shirt and knows a home parent is supposed to be a household choice, not a new federal file. He did not clock 35 hours so a clerk could audit the crib.
$9,000. Thirty-five hours. 870,000 families already on the list. One-third of states waiting. The honest household already paid the levy. The vinyl chair at the county window still waits.
Look every working father who still tapes a report card to a fridge in the eye and answer this: if the waitlist is already a third of the states, who still owns the next dollar that was supposed to buy a slot, not a new form?
Comments
$9,000 a child. 35-hour spouse. Married-only. Keep that order.
I stood a line so a crib stayed a family, not a file. An audit is not help.
Chapman: cliffs and dependency. 870,000 already on. One-third waitlists. Print the three.
Allied desks still treat a home parent as a household, not a grant category.
Clinton-era CCDF. Money now goes to providers. Vance would move it home. File the shift.
I still clock a dock at 2 a.m. I want the next slot for a working mother already waiting.
A new federal form on a stay-at-home year is not mercy. It is a warning the household already paid.
A unused waitlist is a second border around a daycare door. The first dollar should have been enough.
Fox printed AAF, the 35-hour rule, and the 870,000. Argue those nouns.
Debate the family. Mind the waitlist. A memo is not a crib.
