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The White House is shrugging off the internal Republican tension kicked up by its still-unreleased proposal to divert federal childcare aid to stay-at-home parents.
The plan, which would route some money from the government’s $12 billion childcare fund to help married parents who don’t work, reflects the rising power of a GOP wing that’s occasionally willing to abandon party orthodoxy on the size of government in order to appeal to the working-class base that helped elect Trump.
It’s drawing praise from conservative commentators like Terry Schilling of the American Principles Project who argue that it boosts family formation. Its critics on the right, including radio host Erick Erickson, counter that President Donald Trump should focus on cutting government subsidies instead.
While the fierce debate plays out online, the Trump administration has yet to answer key questions about the idea, such as whether it wants Congress to add money to the childcare fund. And for now, some inside and around the White House seem to view the plan’s opponents as irrelevant establishment voices.
“The so-called ‘pushback’ is coming from the same paid-for critics who opposed the president in 2016 and again in 2024,” Trump adviser Alex Bruesewitz told Semafor.
“A decade later, they have smaller audiences, less influence, and almost no impact. I imagine they are being ignored,” said Bruesewitz, who underscored that he isn’t internally tracking the proposal. “Whether this rumored plan comes to fruition or not, I know the President and his administration will stay focused on delivering for working families.”
Another person close to the White House argued that criticism of the proposal, which is similar to policies pitched by Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio during their time in Congress, amounts to “crocodile tears coming from the never-Trump wing of the party.”
This person predicted that polling would show overwhelming support for the plan: “We all agree that big government is bad, but this isn’t a question of whether we spend this money. It’s already been appropriated. It’s a question of whether we use it to incentivize nuclear families or to incentivize single motherhood, which is how it is currently constituted.”
A White House official told Semafor that the plan is not yet finalized and dismissed the early pushback as “playing no role” in the work on it.
It’s also not clear whether any eventual plan would resemble the draft proposal that leaked last week. Though Trump campaigned in 2024 on a promise to make IVF free for women seeking to build families, for example, his administration has so far limited government IVF support to discounted drugs and recommendations for how to lower out-of-pocket costs.
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The government’s Child Care and Development Fund was created to help low-income workers afford childcare, so supporters of the new plan say wrapping in stay-at-home parents is only fair. The GOP’s old guard isn’t buying it.
“The problem with that argument is that I wouldn’t have done the first subsidies,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the conservative American Action Forum, told Semafor. “If you want to say two wrongs make a right, then fine, make that argument — but I’m not.”
He predicted that “fiscally conscious” swing voters wouldn’t be drawn to the GOP by “expanding what the government does,” adding that “this is just silliness.”
The Trump administration likely needs Congress to approve its potential changes, former ACF officials told Semafor, because the law that created the fund does not list parents as eligible childcare providers.
They pointed to prospective legal challenges if the administration acts unilaterally as expected — including to the exclusion of unmarried stay-at-home parents, which could constitute discrimination.
“That has no justification as a childcare statute,” said Mark Greenberg, a former HHS attorney.
Officials would also need lawmakers to add money to the fund to avoid dramatic cuts to existing childcare. The White House has already requested that Congress keep funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant program, which feeds the fund, flat at $8.8 billion for fiscal year 2027.
That’s not enough for 39 states to serve more than 1 in 5 eligible children, even before the administration’s potential expansion.
“I strongly believe all parents should have more support and choices they need to raise healthy and happy children; diverting limited childcare assistance away from a program that has desperate need is not the answer,” said Ruth Friedman, former director of ACF’s Office of Child Care, which administers the fund. “That’s not a serious policy solution.”
Notable
- The childcare plan was first reported by The New York Times.
- Vance’s views on the dollar’s status as reserve currency have become another fault line in the split between the populist right and free-market conservatives, as we reported at Semafor.