The Scoop
Republicans are still in search of ways to add tangible benefits for President Donald Trump’s working-class supporters to their tax plan.
Katie Britt is offering a solution.
The Alabama Republican is pushing to include significant new child care benefits in the Republican tax cut legislation that’s due later this year. Britt’s pitch stems from a bipartisan bill she’s offered with Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., that would boost child and dependent care.
She hopes her party will add her legislation to its party-line tax and border measure later this year, a bill that Republicans will have to design to follow strict rules in order to evade a Democratic filibuster. Britt told Semafor that “if the Republican Party wants to make good on being the party of families and being the party of workers, I could think of no better way than helping drive down the cost of child care.”
In contrast to more sweeping child care proposals from Democrats, Britt added, hers “is a very targeted approach. We lose, as an economy, $122 billion a year due to child care issues. If you look at the cost of this over 10 years … the cost-benefit analysis of this just makes sense.”
Her legislation is estimated to cost about $4 billion a year to implement.
Know More
Republicans are starting to hash out the scope of their tax package, despite ongoing uncertainty as to how soon they’ll be able to pack all their priorities into a single bill. As they do that, plenty of them are recognizing the value in adding provisions for working families, as Democrats attack them for extending tax cuts that benefit the wealthy.
Some Republicans are pushing to greatly expand the child tax credit to help respond to the high cost of raising families; there may be too few resources to both boost that credit and add Britt’s new child care benefits, given the large number of competing tax proposals on the table, according to a person familiar with the talks.
Britt’s proposal would expand the child and dependent care tax credit and make it partially refundable, while increasing the size of the dependent care assistance program and making it easier for businesses to provide child care to their employees.
It has support from Republican Sens. Joni Ernst of Iowa, Susan Collins of Maine, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and John Curtis of Utah. Both Collins and Ernst are up for reelection in battleground states, and child care affordability could prove a politically potent plank of the GOP’s tax package.
Britt has also talked to Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, about her legislation, though he will also have to balance the needs of committee members against the priorities of the rest of the conference.
But for Britt, one of the youngest senators and a mother of two, it’s a no-brainer for her party to make a move now.
“As Republicans, we ran and won as the party of parents, the party of families, and the party of hard-working Americans,” Britt said. “And if you look at this big-tent coalition that we have built now, it’s time for us to make good on that.”
Notable
- House Republicans have their own child care ideas, Fox News reports.
- Vox looked back at why former President Joe Biden’s child care push got stuck in the reconciliation mud.