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The next US president should endorse publicly funded child care for all \u2014 or a $1,000 monthly credit for families with young children that don\u2019t utilize it \u2014 according to a possible early blueprint for Democrats.<\/p>\n
The proposal is among the first ideas published as part of Project 2029, a collection of recommendations by think tanks, former Democratic staffers and other progressive figures. The effort is directed by\u00a0Chad Maisel, a former adviser to President Joseph Biden and Senator Cory Booker, who\u2019s now a senior fellow at left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress.<\/p>\n
Under the plan, the federal government would offer families two choices for each young child under 5: a free public daycare slot, or a stipend of $1,000 per month, meant to offset the costs or lost income associated with parent- or relative-provided care.<\/p>\n
States would work to develop networks of approved daycare providers, which could include neighborhood centers, houses of worship, home-based providers and schools. While children from families at all income levels would be able to enroll in these free seats, only those earning less than $400,000 per year would be able to claim the stipend, the plan says.<\/p>\n
Project 2029 \u2014 a nod to\u00a0Project 2025, the influential policy manual from the conservative Heritage Foundation \u2014 seeks to influence Democrats\u2019 platforms. The inclusion of a child-care plan reflects the widening appeal of free, universal options for parents seeking care for young children.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no getting out of where we are on child care without serious federal investment in the expansion of child-care capacity,\u201d said Tara McGuinness, a co-author of the plan and founder of a research lab at the New America Foundation. \u201cHigh quality child care cannot and should not be done on the cheap.\u201d<\/p>\n
The national average price of child care rose to\u00a0$13,184 per child\u00a0in 2025, a 23% increase from four years earlier, according to the non-profit Child Care Aware of America.<\/p>\n
The Project 2029 proposal bridges a gap between progressive and conservative ideas about how to make raising children more affordable: liberals tend to embrace government-sponsored daycare options, while conservative solutions have focused on child-care tax credits or other financial measures.<\/p>\n
The price tag for\u00a0<\/strong>Project 2029\u2019s plan would be enormous. The report\u2019s co-authors project it would be roughly equivalent to the $200 billion in income, productivity and tax revenue they estimate is lost each year due to childcare challenges.<\/p>\n The inclusion of universal child care in Project 2029 signals that Democrats see it as a winning issue. Free, universal child care was also a centerpiece of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n Early childcare proposals have been popular nationwide. Sixty-four percent of respondents in an Associated Press\/NORC study last year said they want the federal government to\u00a0provide free or low-cost daycare\u00a0for children too young to attend public school, including 76% of Democrats and 51% of Republicans.<\/p>\n Last year, New Mexico became the first state in the nation to implement a child-care plan for all, funded with the investment earnings from a state sovereign wealth fund, though access isn\u2019t yet universal. The District of Columbia\u2019s universal pre-K programs enjoy widespread adoption, with\u00a082% of all 3-year-olds\u00a0and 94% of all 4-year-olds enrolled in 2024. Republican-controlled states including Louisiana and Tennessee have also made recent efforts to expand some early education programming.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Project #floats #free #child #careor #stay #home<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The next US president should endorse publicly funded child care for all \u2014 or a $1,000 monthly credit for families with young children that don\u2019t utilize it \u2014 according to… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12856,1644,12855,1183,8574,228,232,4613,371,1717],"class_list":["post-11271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-careor","tag-child","tag-child-care-costs","tag-democratic-party","tag-floats","tag-free","tag-home","tag-parenting","tag-project","tag-stay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}