Anticipating what Donald Trump and his allies will do can be as much an exercise in scrying as deep analysis. That said, it’s still useful to try and read the tea leaves to at least define the likely contours of possibility. Thus, I want to lay out what I think we might expect from the second Trump administration when it comes to child care and early learning, fully cognizant that these predictions may look foolish in a matter of months. I draw my projections mainly from public reporting, the actions that took place during the first Trump term, and steps taken by Republican leaders during the Biden administration with regard to child care.
I want to be crystal clear up front: It is difficult, if not impossible, to disentangle the Trump administration’s approach to child care policy from its broader set of policies impacting families. If the President-elect makes good on his threats around mass deportation, we know from past experience that many children will be harmed. Similarly, if the Republican-led Congress pays for a huge regressive tax cut with bloody slashes to Medicaid and SNAP, the negative impacts to low- and moderate-income families will dwarf any modest changes to child care policy. (Indeed, a recently released “menu” of cuts the House plans to pursue spares child care and Head Start but includes a host of measures that would likely harm this population.)
Quite frankly, it is unlikely that Trump himself has child care much on his radar. In his first term, Ivanka Trump was the driving force behind steps like the 2019 White House Summit on Paid Leave and Child Care, while Trump’s garbled response to a child care question during the 2024 campaign demonstrated a thin understanding at best. Ivanka isn’t slated to play a substantial role in the administration this time around, and although most child care policy sits within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), it’s not apt to be high on the priority list for HHS Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (although as a presidential candidate, Kennedy had a rather bold child care plan, calling for free care for all families with young children living below the poverty line).
The most pivotal actors on child care are, in my estimation, Vice President-elect JD Vance and a handful of GOP Senators. Vance represents a new wing of the Republican Party that is ostensibly more concerned with strong families than pure economic growth, and has shown openness to the need for more child care funding if done in a pluralistic fashion. Similarly, several Senators — perhaps most notably Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La.,who is the incoming chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala. — stand to play major agenda-setting roles.
Considering the child care bills put forth in the current Congress that had bipartisan support, a plausible child care agenda for Trump’s second presidency may include some or all of the below points. Note that I exclude the debate on the Child Tax Credit; while its fate will of course have an impact on families and the government’s overall budgetary math, it is a broad family support policy, not a child care policy. I also want to reiterate this is not a list of my personal policy preferences, but what I expect may realistically be on the docket:
- An Expanded Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit: In July 2024, Britt introduced a bipartisan bill, alongside Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., that would among other things expand the maximum benefit for the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) and make it refundable. This would represent a major improvement on a clunky credit in which a plurality of the benefit goes to families making over $100,000 a year.
- True Cost-of-Care Reimbursements: In August 2024, Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., along with six other GOP Senators, introduced a bill to reauthorize the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act (CCDBG). Among other steps, this legislation would require all states to adopt true “cost-of-care models” to set their subsidy reimbursement rates. That would represent a massive improvement over the current inadequate model in which reimbursement rates are set as a percentage of what states determine programs currently charge in an artificially depressed market. Several states have already made this switch. There are trade-offs here, as implementing a cost-of-care model (which would significantly increase per-child reimbursement rates) without putting more money into CCDBG would likely result in fewer families being served — in essence, squeezing on two sides of a too-small balloon.
- Regulation Streamlining: Deregulating child care can be a gloss for not wanting to fix the structural problems in the system — and in the worst cases, can lead to more dangerous situations for children. However, over the decades, regulations have stacked up such that the costs of some outweigh the benefits. For instance, states variously dictate a minimum height of fencing around playgrounds, minimum inches of ground cover, and floor areas in which carpeting is acceptable; licensing checklists can encompass literally hundreds of items. There are also zoning and housing regulations that can create barriers to opening and operating family child care programs. North Carolina Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx and Washington Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez recently co-sponsored a bill to remove certain regulations around food preparation for child care providers. While I believe the entire topic should be approached cautiously, we may well see more bills in this vein.
- More Support for Employer-Sponsored Child Care: I have registered my extreme wariness around the trend of leaning on employers as a core child care solution, as opposed to positioning them as advocates for universal solutions which include corporate taxation. That said, there’s little question that promoting employer-sponsored care has been a popular strategy for both parties in recent years. To that end, another part of the Britt-Kaine proposal would majorly increase what is known as the Employer-Provided Child Care Credit (45F), which defrays company costs for providing child care benefits to their employees.
- Stronger Policies for Family, Friend and Neighbor (FFN) Caregivers and Stay-at-Home Parents: Vance and other conservative thinkers — as well as plenty of thinkers on the left — have pointed out that federal child care policy tends to privilege licensed programs over “informal care.” While FFN caregivers are technically eligible to receive CCDBG subsidies, the process can be arduous and the pay miserable. Current policy is also silent on stay-at-home parents. Various proposals have popped up in the last year to treat FFN caregivers and stay-at-home parents more fairly, such as Democratic California Rep. Ro Khanna’s proposal to pay all FFNs a minimum of $15 per hour and provide a monthly stipend of $300 for stay-at-home parents and Sen. Marco Rubio’s, R-Fla. proposal to make CCDBG subsidies more readily available for certain members of these groups and at higher rates. It’s important for policymakers to keep in mind that this is not an either-or equation. Parent choice cuts both ways and more federal support is needed for both licensed and unlicensed providers, for families with a stay-at-home parent and families where parents work outside the home.
It’s impossible to know what Trump’s second presidency will mean for child care. We are in the midst of a realignment around family policy and it’s a highly variable situation with a wide range of possible outcomes. Child care could be put on the backburner entirely; Head Start funding could still get caught in the budgetary crosshairs; the child care system could be consumed by across-the-board cuts to discretionary funding. As we enter 2025, and more becomes clear in the coming months, I look forward to unpacking the news together.
