The reviews are in: Trump’s child care plan benefits wealthy, hurts middle-class families

The proposal would exclude many families who need help the most; the Trump campaign’s numbers don’t come close to adding up; and for much of the country, the size of the candidate’s recommended tax credit would fall far short.

In Trump’s proposal, it’s women who take care of the children, because in Donald Trump’s world, it has always been women who took care of his children. He’s had five kids by three wives, yet bragged that he doesn’t change diapers and that his entire parental responsibility comes down to writing checks.

That could come at a whopping cost. There are some 124 million households in the U.S., about 43 percent of which with children. That’s more than 50 million households. If all of those families put in $1,000 per year, it would cost the government $25 billion annually. Even if half of all families contributed to it, that’s still a big price tag, and the Trump campaign outlines no way to pay for it. Not to mention that that kind of benefit doesn’t help the families who can’t afford to put that much in per year.

But in selling his case, Mr. Trump stretched the truth, saying that his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, has no such plan of her own and ‘never will.’ Mrs. Clinton issued her plan more than a year ago, and it guarantees up to 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave for a newborn or a sick relative, financed by an increase in taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

It’s the latest in a string of Trump’s high-cost promises to voters that have been vague, or misleading, on how he plans to fund them. Mexico says it won’t give a dime for Trump’s border wall, but Trump says it will pay for all of it. Trump also says he’ll triple the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, preserve entitlements, grow the military and make child care tax-deductible, all while sweeping in large-scale tax cuts.

But only offering maternity leave would mean that new fathers and potentially all adoptive parents would be completely left out. Anyone whose parents became sick wouldn’t be able to access paid time off to care for them. And anyone who went through a major illness would only be guaranteed unpaid time off.

Low-wage workers fare even worse under Trump’s plan. Since these families will not benefit from Trump’s tax deduction, Trump has proposed a rebate worth up to $1,200 per family. But this is not nearly enough to make child care affordable for these families. Even assuming that a family with two parents working at minimum wage gets the full $1,200, they would still need to spend 55 percent of their income to place an infant and preschooler in child care centers. The same family would still need to spend 27 percent of their income if they only need child care for the infant.