The Democrats’ Childcare Plan Is Disastrous. These Graphs Explain Why.
Democrats are deliberately choosing to put forward a childcare plan that will be completely disastrous for millions of American families.
The childcare plan is a place where a little more spending could go a long way toward making sure all childcare users are taken care of. But this is not the path Democrats have chosen. (Markus Spiske / Unsplash)
The House passed its version of the Build Back Better (BBB) legislation a couple of weeks ago. Among other things, the bill sets aside grant money for states that want to set up the system of childcare subsidies laid out in the bill. I’ve discussed this childcare provision, and its problems, extensively already. In this post, I attempt to explain and visualize what these childcare subsidies actually look like in concrete dollar terms.
The Bill Text
To understand the overall subsidy scheme for all six years that the program is being enacted for, you have to look at two separate parts of the childcare section.
The first part establishes a sliding scale childcare copayment based on family income. The way this works is that a copayment formula will be applied to every family’s income to determine how much they must pay toward childcare. If the copayment amount is less than the full price of the childcare, the government will cover the rest.
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