This morning, Donald Trump’s campaign announced that it would roll out policy proposals aimed at reducing child care costs and providing new mothers with up to six weeks paid maternity leave.
 
Right now, America’s families and economy are facing a crisis. So it’s good, but not surprising to see that the Trump campaign has caught onto something we, Hillary Clinton, and a bipartisan chorus have been saying for a long time: That being a mother is now a greater predictor of wage inequality than gender; that paid family leave must be advanced; and that child care now costs more than a college education in most states.  
 
Given the current crisis, it shouldn’t be a surprise that both Presidential candidates (Donald Trump now and Hillary Clinton for decades) are talking about the need for paid family leave and affordable, high-quality child care.  Polls show the vast majority of working Americans across the political spectrum support paid family leave and high quality child care, not just because they boost individual families, but because these policies are proven to boost our national economy and help the United States compete on a global level. Indeed, it’s a political reality that candidates must address these key family economic security issues in order to win the votes of women.  
 
While we are heartened that moms have exerted enough political power for the Trump campaign to finally address child care and paid maternity leave, we remain deeply skeptical about Mr. Trump’s commitment to these policies given his long history of denigrating women and mothers in the workplace, including: calling pregnancy an “inconvenience”; calling a lawyer “disgusting” for attempting to take a prearranged and carefully timed break to pump breast milk; saying women merely “perceive a glass ceiling”; the lack of evidence that he has provided paid leave to his own employees; and much more.
 
To be clear: These are critically important policy areas that must be taken seriously. Women, families and businesses are facing a true emergency - and the need is urgent. Women are now half of the labor force for the first time in history and more than 80% of women become moms. Three-quarters of moms are now in our labor force, and more than half of them are primary breadwinners.
 
The wages of moms fuel our economy. Yet lack of adequate paid family leave and affordable child care are part of the reason we have the women’s and mothers’ wage gaps, which lower the consumer spending that is the foundation of our national economy. New Census numbers out just today show that women earn only 80 cents to a man’s dollar, moms earn only 73 cents to a dad’s dollar, and women of color experience increased wage hits on top of that. 
 
Solutions are necessary.  Unfortunately, Mr. Trump’s proposal for only six weeks of paid maternity leave falls far short. To start, he provides no new funding, it’s limited to only new birth mothers, and he’s proposing to raid an already underfunded unemployment system. What the United States needs is a national paid family and medical leave policy that covers all working people and can be used not just by mothers upon the arrival of a new child, but also by new fathers and to care for one’s own very serious medical issue, or that of a spouse, or aging parents. 
 
By comparison, Hillary Clinton’s paid family leave plan covers twelve weeks for all workers in our nation, including dads, and allows coverage for a person’s own serious medical issue, that of a spouse, or aging parents.  Her plan also has a viable new funding stream.
 

Mr. Trump’s child care proposal also falls far short. In fact, his proposals for child care would force families, whose budgets are already breaking from the high cost of care, to pay costs upfront.   This means that Mr. Trump’s plan does nothing to make child care affordable - you cannot deduct something you cannot pay for to begin with. Millions of working families - families for whom the investment in childcare would bring the most critical returns to our economy - would be left out in the cold.  

 By way of comparison, Hillary Clinton’s child care plan, released several months ago, has a specific focus on opening doors to allow middle- and low-income children to thrive by capping child care expenses for families by a percentage of their income through tax credits and subsidized child care; as well as boosting pay for child care workers and other improvements in quality of care.
 
Studies show that excellent child care policy--which involves strengthening the quality of early education and care, affordability, and access--brings an 8:1 return on investment because of fewer later grade repetitions, less future involvement in the criminal justices system, and reduced later need for government support.  Mr. Trump's regressive child care proposal doesn’t meet the standard of increasing access and improving quality to bring the return on investment we all need for our children and economy to thrive.
 
With most families struggling to make ends meet, we need solutions that boost working families and our economy - solutions that put an end to maternal status being a greater predictor of wage inequality than gender - solutions like  paid family and medical leave, high quality affordable child care, earned paid sick days, and more. We do NOT need misguided and regressive plans that continue to leave working families behind.