Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has forced a conversation about child care costs. It is difficult to overstate just how important an issue this is for working families. Sixty percent of Americans told Pew Research Center they struggle to find affordable, quality care. And over the past few decades, weekly child care costs have skyrocketed 70 percent, while wages have remained stuck.
This is a problem that touches nearly everyone — and precisely for that reason it’s also incredibly important that we get the solution right. Certainly, Sen. Warren’s plan is vastly better than the status quo, but Warren’s proposal is too careful, too small. It seems crafted to minimize concerns from conservatives screaming about socialism when the reality is that they’re going to scream socialism no matter what Democrats propose. In short, “WarrenCare” appears to suffer from many of the same flaws as ObamaCare — flaws that, ultimately, have compromised the program’s effect and rendered it a political albatross.
WarrenCare essentially proposes a system of subsidies on a sliding scale. Everyone below 200 percent of the poverty line (about $51,000 for a family of four) could access child care options for free. Those above that level would pay a subsidized rate based on income; no one would pay more than 7 percent of their income for child care. According to a Moody’s Analytics study, this would give 8.8 million kids access to free child care. Warren’s policy brief says that child care centers would be “locally-administered and federally-supported.” It’s unclear what would happen if, as under ObamaCare, red states and counties dug in their heels against the law, refusing to help set up these child care networks.
My larger concern, though, is with the ObamaCare-esque sliding scale of subsidies and free access for some, but not all. Under ObamaCare, this structure ultimately led to class- and race-based attacks. People who were working, and earning enough money to have to pay full price, were rightfully angry that people not working received a greater benefit. Meanwhile, resentment towards the “undeserving” poor quickly fomented into the type of racist tropes and stereotypes that doomed welfare. Older, white Americans were outraged that, in the words of a 2012 advertisement by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign: “The money you paid for your guaranteed health care is going to a massive new government program that is not for you.”
This reaction is typical. Whether it’s ObamaCare, welfare, food stamps or any other government program, when the benefit goes to some, but not all, it becomes subject to these types of attacks — against Obama phones for “welfare queens” in Cadillacs, or “inner-city” moms with eight kids all wearing new Nike sneakers. You know the playbook. It doesn’t matter that it’s not true. It doesn’t matter that plenty more white folks than black folks benefit from safety net programs. Conservative media and politicians know how to use America’s continuing problems with race and class to destroy anything that gives benefits selectively.
This is a problem that touches nearly everyone — and precisely for that reason it’s also incredibly important that we get the solution right. Certainly, Sen. Warren’s plan is vastly better than the status quo, but Warren’s proposal is too careful, too small. It seems crafted to minimize concerns from conservatives screaming about socialism when the reality is that they’re going to scream socialism no matter what Democrats propose. In short, “WarrenCare” appears to suffer from many of the same flaws as ObamaCare — flaws that, ultimately, have compromised the program’s effect and rendered it a political albatross.
WarrenCare essentially proposes a system of subsidies on a sliding scale. Everyone below 200 percent of the poverty line (about $51,000 for a family of four) could access child care options for free. Those above that level would pay a subsidized rate based on income; no one would pay more than 7 percent of their income for child care. According to a Moody’s Analytics study, this would give 8.8 million kids access to free child care. Warren’s policy brief says that child care centers would be “locally-administered and federally-supported.” It’s unclear what would happen if, as under ObamaCare, red states and counties dug in their heels against the law, refusing to help set up these child care networks.
My larger concern, though, is with the ObamaCare-esque sliding scale of subsidies and free access for some, but not all. Under ObamaCare, this structure ultimately led to class- and race-based attacks. People who were working, and earning enough money to have to pay full price, were rightfully angry that people not working received a greater benefit. Meanwhile, resentment towards the “undeserving” poor quickly fomented into the type of racist tropes and stereotypes that doomed welfare. Older, white Americans were outraged that, in the words of a 2012 advertisement by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign: “The money you paid for your guaranteed health care is going to a massive new government program that is not for you.”
This reaction is typical. Whether it’s ObamaCare, welfare, food stamps or any other government program, when the benefit goes to some, but not all, it becomes subject to these types of attacks — against Obama phones for “welfare queens” in Cadillacs, or “inner-city” moms with eight kids all wearing new Nike sneakers. You know the playbook. It doesn’t matter that it’s not true. It doesn’t matter that plenty more white folks than black folks benefit from safety net programs. Conservative media and politicians know how to use America’s continuing problems with race and class to destroy anything that gives benefits selectively.
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