On Labor Day Vice President JD Vance unveiled his great idea to win the 2026 midterms for the GOP:  open up the Child Care Development Fund to married couples where one parent stays at home, but not to unmarried couples or to single parents who don’t work. See where this is going?

There are a few problems with this idea. First, why do stay at home mothers (you know it only applies to women) need childcare? Isn’t that the point of staying at home—that you don’t use daycare or other forms of childcare? That you raise your own kids and don’t rely on people who aren’t your family to help you? Remember this:

Vance has also addressed the issue of rising care costs, though he’s taken a different approach, encouraging parents and other family members to stay home with their children.

“Maybe Grandma or Grandpa wants to help out a little bit more, or maybe there is an aunt or uncle that wants to help out a little bit more,” he said in Arizona this month. “If that happens, you relieve some of the pressure on all the resources that we’re spending on day care.”

Second, if you’re a SAHM what else are you doing except raising your kids? Why do you need a voucher from the CCDF? This is a very confusing redirection of these funds.

See, the point of the program is to help single parents and poor families to afford childcare so they can find jobs and have stable childcare to keep them. From the text of the act:

The CCDBG Act identifies seven broad program purposes:³

• • 1. allowing states flexibility in developing their child care programs and policies;
  • 2. promoting parental choice to empower working parents to choose the care that best suits their family;
  • 3. encouraging states to provide consumer education information to parents and to promote family involvement;
  • 4. helping states to deliver high-quality, coordinated early childhood care and education services that maximize parents’ options and support parents trying to become independent of public assistance;
  • 5. assisting states in improving overall quality of care by implementing health, safety, licensing, training, and oversight standards;
  • 6. improving child care and development of participating children; and
  • 7. raising the number and percentage of low-income children in high-quality care.

And there are specific requirements:

With limited exceptions, to be eligible for CCDF subsidies, a child must (1) be younger than age 13, (2) live with a parent or parents who are working or in a job training or education program, (3) have a family income at or below 85% of state median income, and (4) have family assets that do not exceed $1 million. Lead agencies have some flexibility in implementing these rules and often set income eligibility limits below the federal maximum.

There is another important piece of information about this program:  most people who apply for it don’t get it because it is underfunded:

For low-income working families in the United States, the federal government offers financial aid to help pay for childcare. That is, if families can get off the waitlist for it.

In the second half of last year, there were an estimated 400,000 children on waitlists for childcare assistance programs across the U.S., according to a report by the National Women’s Law Center released in May. That’s nearly the size of the population of Minneapolis.

That figure has more than tripled over the past two years. Around 118,800 kids were on waitlists in early 2024, the group found.

But there has not been nearly enough money available for caregivers looking for financial help, especially recently, as childcare costs have ballooned nationwide.

Here’s another problem with Vance’s idea:  the CCDF is a program to support low income workers by helping to provide childcare. It is not a program to support families, and it makes no sense to turn it into that kind of a program, especially as it is already under-funded. One thing that would make sense would be the return of the Biden era tax credits for families, but the Republicans already killed that program. Which is confusing, right?

But none of this is confusing if you look at what it is really all about:  white people welfare. For some reason, probably related to the upcoming midterm disaster and the GOP’s hatred of anyone who is not a straight white millionaire male receiving any government money, the money that helps poor people keep their jobs needs to be opened up to people who have decided that, and stay with me here, they don’t need to work and can stay home to raise their kids. I know a Catch-22 when I see it:

I’ll leave you with this: