Donald Trump broke with the GOP’s orthodox commitment to small government on Tuesday in a speech outlining his plan to provide six weeks of paid maternity leave to new mothers.
Appearing with daughter Ivanka in Aston, Pennsylvania, the Republican nominee said that the plan, which would not be transferrable to fathers, would be financed by with funds saved by eliminating fraud in the unemployment insurance program. Trump insisted taxes would not need to be raised to fund it.
“We need working mothers to be fairly compensated for their work, and to have access to affordable, quality child care for their kids,” Trump told the crowd.
Cutting social safety net programs has been a core mission of Republican leaders for decades, and prominent conservatives including House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) have argued that it would be too costly for the federal government to support national paid family and sick leave.
Trump’s plan, delivered in the Philadelphia suburbs, was meant to appeal to middle and upper-middle class women who have overwhelmingly supported Hillary Clinton. Ivanka Trump, who first brought up her father’s interest in policies supporting working families during a speech at the Republican National Committee in July, was the force behind it, according to the real estate mogul.
Other Trump proposals include allowing working families to deduct childcare costs on their taxes, which critics have said won’t help lower-income families who don’t earn enough to pay taxes at all.
Hillary Clinton, who released her childcare plan last year before she even entered the 2016 race, has proposed guaranteeing 12 weeks of paid family leave. Her policy advisor Maya Harris released a statement ahead of Trump’s Pennsylvania speech blasting the plan as a regressive throwback that doesn’t account for the shared parenting model common among modern families.
“Trump’s plan casts women as the sole child caretaker and actually encourages employers to discriminate against women,” Harris wrote in a statement, adding that the proposal “undercuts working dads, including gay couples and single-fathers.”
“Instead of asking those at the top to pay their fair share, he’s robbing Peter to pay Paul by raiding unemployment insurance funds, and giving the most to the wealthy while providing far less relief to middle-class and working families,” Harris wrote.
Clinton’s paid leave plan relies on increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
