Walz and Vance both tout child-care issues, with some differences

“For the first time in years, we have presidential and vice-presidential candidates who are actively talking about families and their struggles — almost one-upping each other on policies like the child tax credit and paid family leave,” said Adrienne Schweer, a fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “The conversation just keeps getting bigger and more robust as we get closer to the election.”

Generally, Walz and Vice President Kamala Harris have been more organized about laying out plans with some details when it comes to policy proposals aimed at caregivers. Vance and former president Donald Trump haven’t come out with similar proposals, although Vance has been talking about the need for better family-friendly policies on the campaign trail.

Walz, who has two children, has promised to double down on the family-friendly policies he put into place as governor of Minnesota. Vance, who has three children, has called the left “anti-child” and said he would be a “pro-family” leader.

Here’s where the candidates stand on four key issues.

Expanded child tax credit

Both sides have said they would permanently expand the child tax credit, which offers families up to $2,000 per child. A pandemic-era expansion, which boosted the credit to $3,600 per child in 2021, temporarily lifted millions of children out of poverty and reduced the child poverty rate to an all-time low. But those gains were quickly reversed once the extra payments expired: Childhood poverty more than doubled in 2022, and has continued to rise since.

Harris and Walz have made a permanent expansion of the child tax credit a central part of their campaign, saying they’d offer an additional $6,000 credit to parents of newborns. As governor, Walz enacted a statewide tax credit that offers Minnesota families as much as $1,750 per child — the largest state-level credit in the country.

Trump and Vance have also made similar promises. Vance last month said he’d “love to see” a federal tax credit of $5,000 per child, regardless of a family’s income, but noted that it’d be up to Congress “to see how possible and viable that is.”

Just days earlier, though, Vance was a no-show for a vote to expand the child tax credit. The legislation, which passed the House earlier in the year, was ultimately blocked by Senate Republicans.

Paid family leave

Less than one-third of Americans in private-sector jobs have access to paid family leave, and the rates are even more depressed among low-wage workers.

Paid family leave was a notable part of Trump’s first campaign in 2016, making him the first Republican candidate to champion such a policy. In 2019, as president, he granted federal workers 12 weeks of paid parental leave.

“After decades of empty promises and inaction … this ensures parents are not forced to choose between their jobs and spending precious time with their children,” he wrote at the time. This time around, though, he and Vance have been less vocal about family leave.

Walz, meanwhile, has said paid family and medical leave would be the first course of business, should he and Harris win — although they’ve yet to propose how long it should be. As governor, he signed into law a new measure that will offer up to 20 weeks of paid time off that Minnesotans can use to care for a family member or a new child, or while recovering from their own illness. The law goes into effect in 2026, though Walz has also spoken about the importance of enacting similar policies nationally.

“We’re the last nation on earth basically to not do this,” he said in an August podcast. “It is so foundational to just basic decency and financial well-being. And I think that would start to change both finances, attitude — strengthen the family.”

Rising child-care costs

The cost of child care is rising faster than inflation, putting millions of families under financial strain.

The Biden administration has poured billions of dollars into temporarily boosting grants for child-care providers and subsidizing care for families. Those measures have expired, but Harris and Walz have vowed to build on those efforts by capping child-care costs at 7 percent of a family’s income.

Walz has long prioritized similar issues as a politician. This year he announced an extra $6.2 million in grants to expand child-care availability and bring down costs in Minnesota. “Accessible, quality child care is critical not only for strong child development, but also for the economic well-being of the families in our state,” he said in May.

Vance has also addressed the issue of rising care costs, though he’s taken a different approach, encouraging parents and other families to stay home with their children.

“Maybe Grandma or Grandpa wants to help out a little bit more, or maybe there is an aunt or uncle that wants to help out a little bit more,” he said in Arizona this month. “If that happens, you relieve some of the pressure on all the resources that we’re spending on day care.”

Last year, Vance introduced the Fairness for Stay-at-Home Parents Act, which would do away with health-insurance penalties for parents who quit their jobs to stay home with their newborns. As it stands now, employers can ask workers to pay them back for health-care premiums if they don’t return to work after taking Family and Medical Leave.

“Our laws should not penalize new parents who choose to stay home to care for their newborn babies,” Vance said. “We should celebrate and promote young families, not punish them. This legislation would relieve a serious financial burden for working families all over America and steer Washington in a more pro-family direction.”

Wages for care workers

Day cares, preschools and other child-care centers suffered a big blow during the pandemic, when many were forced to suddenly close. Since then, they have barely recovered, in large part because many workers have moved on to higher-paying work. Child-care workers last year had a median wage of $14.60 an hour, or $30,370 a year, making them among the country’s lowest paid employees. Those low wages have fueled child-care staff shortages across the country.

Vance has called for doing away with certifications and other requirements that he says have become financial burdens to workers. Rolling back such policies, he said, would help lower costs for parents who are “paying out the wazoo for day care.”

“We’ve got a lot of people who love kids, who would love to take care of kids” but can’t because of “ridiculous certification” rules, he said this month. “Empower people to get the skills they need …[without] a whole lot of debt.”

Meanwhile, Walz, a former high school teacher, has long been a proponent of raising wages for child-care workers. As governor, he created a $316 million program to boost wages and benefits for child-care workers.

The “economy doesn’t work without child care providers,” Walz said last year. “We are boosting the pay and benefits those providers receive to grow the workforce and reflect the critical work they do each and every day.”