Obama wants to expand a tax credit that favors childcare for the sake of earning money over childcare for other purposes — like painting your own kitchen, homeschooling older kids, or getting some peace and quiet while your spouse travels for work. He also wants to create a new $500 tax credit for parents, but only those families where both parents have paid jobs outside the house. In my column, I argue this is social engineering through the tax code, and that it values paid work over the work of raising a family.
These tax proposals also represent a federal subsidy to the childcare industry. Federal subsidies for education have probably driven up the price of education, and they eventually increase federal control over education. So these incentives and subsidies push children from a parent-controlled world to an institutional and federally influenced world.
Simultaneously, Obama has proposed federal subsidies to make community college free to students.
The pattern here is reflected in plans like universal preschool: the urge to get children to spend more time in government-run or government-funded institutions.
This is not a goal most Americans share, I suspect, but it’s one President Obama has long articulated.
