Former President Donald Trump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) is proposing a pro-family agenda that would include an expanded child tax credit as well as a childcare policy that benefits not only those sending their children to childcare centers but also stay-at-home moms, dads, and grandparents.
During an interview with CBS News’s Margaret Brennan, Vance outlined what he hopes to enact in a second Trump administration to lessen financial burdens.
“What President Trump and I want to do on family policy is make it easier for families to start in the first place. We want to bring down housing costs so that if you have a baby, there’s actually a place to raise that baby,” Vance said:
[We] want to increase and expand the child tax credit. We want to make it easier for moms and dads to not be shocked by these surprise medical bills when they go to an out-of-network provider. We’re working on all this stuff, and I think that’s ultimately how we turn down the temperature a little bit, is to make it easier to choose life in the first place. Because when you talk to women, you talk to moms and dads, a lot of times they feel like, if you have a pregnancy, especially an unexpected pregnancy, there just aren’t options. We want to provide more options so that people are raising families in a thriving and happy way in this country. [Emphasis added]
Specifically, Vance said he wants to see an expanded and permanent child tax credit.
“The child tax credit has languished thanks to the Biden administration because Harris has failed to show fundamental leadership,” Vance said. “… I’d love to see a child tax credit that’s $5,000 per child. But you, of course, have to work with Congress to see how possible and viable that is.”
The current child tax credit allows up to $2,000 per child.
Vance noted that Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign has attacked him for supporting child tax credits even though Democrats in Congress have routinely backed an expanded child tax credit.
“When these comments — where I said parents should pay lower taxes via the child tax credit — came out, the Harris administration immediately jumped and said, ‘We disagree with this,’ … So do they want the elimination of the child tax credit? Or were they just being careless in responding to remarks that I made three years ago? I don’t know. They should clarify it, ” Vance said.
Such a “broad-based family policy” as an expanded child tax credit would “apply to all American families” from low-income to high-income families and families with straight or gay parents.
“I don’t think that you want this, this, this massive cut-off for lower-income families, which you have right now,” Vance said. “You don’t want a different policy for higher-income families. You just want to have a pro-family child tax credit.”
Also a part of Trump and Vance’s pro-family agenda is a childcare policy that would help parents who send their children to child care centers as well as stay-at-home moms, dads, and grandparents. Not excluding stay-at-home parents is vital, Vance said:
We, of course, want to give everybody access to child care. But look, in my family, I grew up in a poor family where the child care was my grandparents, and a lot of these child care proposals do nothing for grandparents. If you look at some of these proposals, they do nothing for stay-at-home moms or stay-at-home dads. I want us to have a child care policy that’s good for all families, not just a particular model of family.
[Emphasis added]
Vance suggested possibly tax credits or checks cut to those moms, dads, and grandparents who stay home to care for their children.
“I don’t want us to favor one family model over another,” Vance said. “If you’ve got grandparents who are at home taking care of the kids, I think they deserve to be treated the … same way as other family models by their government.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
