Ever since JD Vance’s comment about the country being run by “childless cat ladies” was met with immense backlash, the VP hopeful and his allies have attempted to spin his complaint as being about the supposed roadblocks Democrats have put up to raising children in the US. “What he was really saying,” Vance’s wife insisted last month, “is that it can be really hard to be a parent in this country, and sometimes our policies are designed in a way that make it even harder.” Take the cost of childcare, which has exploded in recent years. Critics focus on Vance’s words, but he’s actually come up with a solution to the problem that will truly knock your socks off. In fact, you might want to brace yourself for its genius. Ready? Okay. It’s to…have family members take care of your kids for free.
That’s right: While speaking at a conservative event on Wednesday, Vance was asked, “What can we do about lowering the cost of day care?” His verbatim answer: “Such an important question, Charlie [Kirk], and I think one of the things that we can do is make it easier for families to choose whatever model they want, right? So one of the ways that you might be able to relieve a little bit of pressure on people who are paying so much for day care is…maybe grandma and grandpa [want] to help out a little bit more, or maybe there’s an aunt or uncle that wants to help out a little bit more. If that happens, you relieve some of the pressure on all the resources that we’re spending on day care.”
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Yes, Vance’s brilliant solution to skyrocketing day care costs is for working parents to enlist grandparents and aunts and uncles—who either don’t have jobs of their own or are somehow able to take time off from work—to take care of their kids for free. It’s something stressed-out parents have definitely never thought of, and for the few who actually might have this magical scenario available to them, surely they aren’t taking advantage of it already. It’s so simple that it’s hard to believe child-hating Democrats like Kamala Harris never thought of it themselves.
But Vance, of course, isn’t so out of touch that he thinks the majority of parents have a roster of family members they can call on to take care of their children for numerous hours a week. So he’s also got another idea: “Now…let’s say you don’t have somebody who can provide that extra set of hands,” he said. “What we’ve got to do is actually empower people to get trained in the skills that they need for the 21st century. We’ve got a lot of people who love kids, who would love to take care of kids but they can’t, either because they don’t have access to the education that they need or, maybe more importantly, because the state government says you’re not allowed to take care of children unless you have some ridiculous certification that has…nothing to do with taking care of kids. So empower people to get the skills they need. Don’t force every early-childcare specialist to go and get a six-year college degree where they’ve got a whole lot of debt and Americans are much poorer because they’re paying out the wazoo for day care. Empower working families, empower people who want to do these things for a living, and that’s what we’ve got to do.”
So, just to get it out of the way, it’s not clear what “six-year college degree” the senator is talking about that is supposedly required to work at a day care. But apparently his solution—if, again, you don’t have free childcare at your disposal—is to have the government get rid of the pesky regulations currently in place to ensure the individuals looking after your children are qualified to do so. Of course, he doesn’t actually specify what “ridiculous certification” he’d get rid of; perhaps he’s talking about CPR? He definitely could be!
Incidentally, given these robust policy plans Vance has put forth, you might be wondering what legislation he’s backed during his time in the Senate that would help parents. And the answer is: none that can be identified by the naked eye. Despite calling for a child tax credit of $5,000 per child in an interview with CBS News, he failed to show up for a vote last month on legislation that would—wait for it—expand the child tax credit.