A Trump Plan to Pay Stay-at-Home-Moms?

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0:17From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. The Trump administration is floating using federal welfare dollars to pay some stay-at-home moms. Meanwhile, a new report on graduate education from the American Enterprise Institute asks, what are we teaching the teachers these days? Welcome to Potomac Watch. I'm Kate O'Dell, your host for today. We have two of my lovely colleagues with us today. First, Matt Cottonetti, a columnist for our daily newsletter, Free Expression, and later Nicole Ault, who covers education for us here at the editorial page. Welcome to you both.

0:52Matt, always great to have you. Over the weekend, there was a report in the New York Times about an administration draft plan that would pay some parents who stay at home with kids. Now, I want to start with some caveats here. We don't have very many details on exactly how this idea would work. We just have this leak so far. But it looks to me, Matt, like this. Currently, we have a welfare program known as the Child Care Development Fund, about$14 billion a year. And this money basically goes to low-income parents who get a voucher to get child care. And the whole point of it is so that they can go to work, get a certificate, go to school, or get retrained.

1:32The point is to get them earning more money and getting off federal welfare programs. To my eye, the administration wants to change the subsidy programs that if you are married and your spouse is working, the other spouse can stay at home and raise the kids. And to me, Matt, it looks like we're taking a program that's supposed to be temporary help to get you back to work, back on your feet, off welfare. And we're taking it and turning it into something closer to a basic income where we pay one parent to stay out of the labor force. So what is your sense of this proposal that's under discussion and how exactly it would work?

2:10Well, thanks, Kate. I think you gave a pretty good description of what we know so far. I think the debate about this proposal, it's not even an official proposal by the Trump administration, but the debate over the idea of changing this one particular welfare program, opening it up to basically married couples, one of whom stays at home, would get up to$9 ,000 to defray the in-home childcare costs, is representative of the larger debate that's happening in the Republican Party. as we head into the back half of Donald Trump's second term. So this debate or this proposal is identified with Vice President Vance, who has talked in the past about family policy that would support stay-at-home parents, stay-at-home moms in particular.

2:58And it's also identified with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who actually put forward a similar proposal while he was still in the Senate. And what we have essentially is a group of Trump Republicans, led by the vice president who want to begin reshaping American welfare policy to benefit families. There's a problem, though, and that is there's no legislation for the proposal. There's not enough votes in the Congress for any sort of change that Vice President Vance would want. And so what you and I are discussing is a potential proposed rule from the Department of Health and Human Services that would change this program through administrative fiat if the rule is published and then goes through the public comment period and then goes into effect.

3:47And so I think right there you have the beginnings of a problem with the policy, which is that it's using the administrative state, something that conservatives typically oppose, to make changes without any democratic accountability through lawmaking. And then you get to the policy itself. And I think that also has created splits, not just among the conservative coalition with limited government types saying, well, why are we doing any sort of proposal? Why not just take all the programs away? And then the big government conservatives or the social conservatives saying, no, we want to open up this program to married families.

4:24There's even a divide within the social conservatives who want to do more to help married families raising children. And that's because right now the policy, as you laid out, it's really a very specific policy meant to complement the landmark welfare reform bill of 1996, which celebrating the 30th anniversary of it. This welfare reform bill in 1996 was the first major post-war reform of entitlements. It ended an entitlement program, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children. It put in place a new temporary assistance for needy families, TANF, which is a welfare-to-work program. And this component, the Child Care and Development Fund, was meant to help single mothers in particular, who, of course, if they're learning how to work so they can get off welfare, they don't necessarily have someone or child care available.

5:12And in fact, 80 percent of the beneficiaries of the program right now are single mothers who are trying to enter the workforce. Well, by opening this up to the new stay at home parent, while not increasing the overall budget, you have social conservative types saying, well, that's going to change, in fact, even reverse the whole nature of the program. so that what they're putting forward is there's a simpler way to do this if you just want to help stay-at-home parents, and that is just to increase the child tax credit, which was indexed for inflation in the One Big Beautiful Bill, but not increased as much as they want.

5:47So this obscure regulatory issue is, in fact, reflective, I think, of the emerging divides within the conservative coalition and within the post-Trump GOP. We're going to take a quick break and be back with more Potemic Watch. Congress has talked about permitting reform for decades. Now it's time to actually do it and secure our affordable energy future. Pass permitting reform now. Paid for by the American Petroleum Institute.

6:18This is Matthew Hennessey, the editor of Free Expression. I want to personally invite you to come check out what we're doing. Signing up for the newsletter couldn't be easier. Just go to our homepage. Directly below the Wall Street Journal logo, you'll find the magic words, free expression wedged between opinion and arts. There's an option to sign up for the newsletter right at the top of our section. Just hit that button and you'll start getting the world's hardest working newsletter delivered directly to your inbox Monday through Friday. If you aren't a journal subscriber, the newsletter is free, but we are gonna need your email address.

6:54There's a lot of fun stuff in the newsletter that you can only read in the newsletter, and I don't want you to miss any of it. Sign up for free expression today. We'll see you in your inbox. Welcome back. I'm chatting with Matt Continetti about a new proposal to pay stay-at-home moms. If you start allowing these programs to be expanded up to new constituencies, you will get outbid by Democrats. I mean, that's an argument we've made a long time here. We'd make it on the child tax credit that you just mentioned. And I do think the divide you're describing and the direction that Vance and others in the party want to go, there's this kind of obscure policy change we're talking about that would allow stay-at-home parent support for certain parts of the income scale.

7:35And then they, I think, quite openly want to expand that child tax credit to give it to people further up the income ladder. And I think, you know, first of all, the idea that this one will just be done by using the existing funding to me just doesn't check out that we're going to just take the existing pot of money and that there won't be pressures to spend more money on this program. You have Democrats already saying Rosa DeLauro in the House said that J.D. Vance wants to raid this development fund and it's completely inadequate as it is. Children are on waiting lists. So we need more funding in this program if we're going to open it up to new constituencies.

8:08That's inevitable. But I think also, to your point about welfare reform, it gives Democrats a pretty potent opening to roll back the underpinning of that law. Because if you start saying some constituencies who are on welfare as temporary social support need to go to work, but others don't. Democrats will absolutely use that when they retake power to, you know, exempt single moms from having to go to work either. It is starting to undo the program's connection with work and upward mobility. And I dwell on that because I think there's this caricature out there that those of us who oppose changes like this are obsessed with GDP growth or, you know, are indifferent to the demands and work that goes into being a stay-at-home mom.

8:49When in reality, what we're talking about here is this program has required everyone in it to work because that is indispensable to moving out of poverty, including for single moms. And so the idea that we're going to sever that connection, I don't see that as being good either for the people in the program, but also for the children in the program who do better when they grow up in neighborhoods where everyone is working. I think there's something larger at stake here. I do want you to take on a political point here, which it seems to be one of the arguments for this is we can't reform these programs, so we might as well get payouts to people who are doing good things like raising children in their homes.

9:26That, to me, looks like what's wrong on the politics. I mean, Republicans just passed a year ago large changes to food stamps. They put the first work requirements in Medicaid. So why not use the rest of their majority to do further welfare reform instead of these bizarre administrative fixes that, to your point, have no democratic accountability. Sure. I mean, at first we should just say, you know, this proposal applies to married couples, one of whom is working. So, so there is still a work requirement in it. And that's what's leading to some kind of the ambivalence toward this initiative. But there's also kind of a perverse incentive involved because if suddenly you're granting a benefit of up to$9 ,000 to a couple, one of whom is working and the other is not, well, that's going to tie down, say, the spouse who's working from getting a promotion, because if they get above the income threshold, then they're going to lose the$9 ,000.

10:20So you see this in welfare policy all the time. This means tested programs come with perverse incentives that actually limit social mobility in a way. So there is a work requirement, but it could also contribute to not just gaming the system, right? People now presenting, oh, well, hey, we're married. Of course, this is the same administration that's done quite a bit uncovering social welfare fraud. So this is a potential opportunity for grift or cheating, but it also carries with it those sort of penalties that you have with what we call benefit cliffs in the policy world. Politically, this is, I think, the first policy initiative we can say that is coming from the J.D.

10:58Vance world. And that is the collection of groups, but there's Heritage Foundation, American Compass, American Moment, to the J.D. Vance kind of view of the world that says, you know, look, Wall Street Journal conservatives, you don't know what time it is. And what time it is means that we need to start using big government to further conservative goals, particularly social conservative goals. And so here's this program. It's already written law. There's already funds appropriated for it. What we want to do is change it so that we can give this benefit to stay at home parents. Politically, how is it going to work?

11:33I mean, I don't think it's one, the program is large enough to attract a mass constituency. What I view this is, is more of kind of the camel's nose under the tent, which is to say, here's a way that we do this in this program. Then maybe we can lay the groundwork for much more extensive interventions or subsidies in order to promote family formation and even pregnancies in the future, which is major concerns of the Vance wing of the party. The problem there, of course, is we've had running experiments in what's called pronatalist policy in many developed economies over the years. And there's almost no positive effects from these sorts of welfare or subsidy programs.

12:14The one developed economy that does have a growing demography that's growing in population and not shrinking like now the United States is, is Israel. And they have some pronatalist policies, but it's much larger. It has to do with the effects of religion, has to do with social cohesion. It has to do with the sense of external threat. I think all kind of carry forward the Israeli demographic boom. And so we don't have those conditions in the United States and something to be aware of. But I think that the approach that Vance is taking here, or of course, the Trump administration of which Vance is a part is taking here, is this approach that we need to use the administrative state in order to promote families.

12:53And that will carry with the benefit politically because our voters will see us as doing something for them. The problem is the political record is not as sterling as you would expect. And just one final irony here. The type of family policy we see here has been much more in line with, say, the big government conservatism of the Bush administration, the George W. Bush administration of earlier in the century. And of course, the Vance wing of the party demonizes the George W. Bush administration for a variety of sins that they allege. And yet here we see the same kind of a mentality, which is, you know, we need to use government to do something for our people.

13:32And with that might come some political benefit down the road. Yeah. And to that irony, to that point, I mean, in addition to the big government approach, there is also that argument I was mentioning, which is we just can't fix the underlying programs. And so let's give up. I mean, it's just it's ironic to hear coming from this part of the coalition. But you see here, no one is really saying this program is failing. That's the other irony. The proponents of this policy are saying the program discriminates against stay at home parents. But OK, the program is meant to help parents who get into the workforce.

14:04And so no one is saying that it's failing in that. In fact, as you just mentioned, there's there's a waiting list. There's over 1.3 million children who get the benefit through this program. And so we have to ask welfare reform is the most successful social policy we've had in 30 years. And some of the commemorations of the anniversary have shown that and remind us of that. So do we really want to kind of tinker with that machinery, which has been very powerful in promoting work? And indeed, as you also say, other aspects of the Trump administration, including the portions of the One Big Beautiful Bill, extended the welfare reform model to Medicaid and to food stamps.

14:45And that is the path I think we should be taking rather than trying to engineer a favored social outcome with a preexisting program meant to do something else. Yeah, just two quick final points on that. You're right to underscore the point that someone in the household has to be working under this particular proposal, though Democrats might might try to expand on it. But at the same time, the number of practical distortions that could come from a policy like this are are significant. I mean, one of which is, Matt, would you like to tell us what a stay-at-home mom is? Is someone who works eight hours a week a stay-at-home mom?

15:18Is someone who watches another child while she cares for her own kid? Is she a stay-at-home mom? So it will put its thumb on the scale for decisions that families are making. And I understand the conservative argument that children are better off spending more time with their parents and less time in daycare. But at the same time, we really wanted to kind of look at the social safety net and revise the way that it disincentivizes marriage and family stability. There is a lot of low-hanging fruit here that doesn't involve creating this bizarre new Byzantine system for stay-at-home moms. I mean, some of these programs, you know, like I'm thinking of like the earned income tax credit, they because of how they phase out, like you were mentioning that benefit clip, they punish people who get married in that range.

16:01It discourages family formation. So there's just there's a number of things we could do, even in this particular program, the Childhood Development Fund. I mean, some small percentage of children are cared for by a grandma could try to put more money on that, try to get more of this money to home daycares that more parents prefer. So I think you're right to really underscore that this is a larger intellectual project that shows some of the fissures in the Republican Party going forward. One final thought, you know, reading the coverage of the proposed rule in The New York Times in particular, you see a lot of these quotes from these daycare providers saying, well, we hate this because it might deny us the subsidy.

16:37And so I have to say, I'm not throwing a pity party for them. Right. I mean, this is the issue with government subsidies is once you extend them, people become dependent on them, including commercial firms like these commercial daycares that are getting a lot of impact, most of the money. And it drives up the cost of care, which parents complain about. That's the other fallacy to watch out for is that some of these child care companies are saying, oh, we're going to have to increase our fees. That's not actually how it works. They increase the fees already because they're getting the government subsidy.

17:05Removing the government subsidy actually would force them to compete. And we know that competition leads to lower costs. If anything, I prefer to be having that conversation. Right. But that's not the political environment where we live right now. it's the Trump administration and J.D. Vance in particular thinking about 2028 and beyond and attempting to use this preexisting program altered in a way that would lead to these social experimentation he favors. Well, thanks, Matt. Thanks for joining us. Hang tight. We're going to take one more quick break in Potomac Watch. And when we come back, I'll chat with my colleague Nicole Ault about a new report about what is being taught in graduate schools for teachers.

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18:12From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. Welcome back to Potomac Watch. I'm now going to turn to chatting with my colleague, Nicole Ault. Nicole, welcome to the show. We're going to chat about a new survey of graduate programs you wrote about in the Wednesday editorial pages. You followed closely the crisis in public education over the past several years, including enrollment declines after the pandemic, including an increase in behavioral and disciplinary problems in schools, the long and steady decline in math and reading scores. This week, a Gallup survey put some of that in stark relief.

18:46I mean, it found that public confidence in public schools is dipping to all-time lows. Only 35 % of Democrats and 32 % of independents said they were satisfied with K-12 education, and the number was even lower for Republicans at around 25%, one in four. And I want to connect this conversation we're going to have about graduate schools to what Matt and I were just talking about. Because I think the perception that public schools are not available for all children and that parents need to look elsewhere and pay out of pocket for their children's education, I think that feeds the family affordability issues that are at the forefront of our political discussion.

19:24So Matt and I were talking about new subsidies for families. And I think the fixing the crisis in the public schools is one of the most urgent priorities in family affordability, even though it doesn't always get framed with that that way. So that's a long interlude, Nicole. But all that to say, I think one constructive angle here that you've looked at is what are the teachers learning these days? What do we teach the teachers? And so you put out an editorial about a new report from the American Enterprise Institute that looked under the hood of some of these graduate programs for teachers and said, what are they learning there?

19:56What are these programs providing? So why don't you tell us a little bit about out of top line, what the value of this report it is and what it found. Thanks, Kate. Yeah, so this report absolutely, I think, connects to what's causing parents' frustration with the K-12 system because kids are learning what their teachers are learning in grad school or other education schools. And we know from declining scores in reading and math that they're not getting the basic education that they need. And this report really shows how there is a lot of emphasis in these graduate schools of education on politics and progressive approaches to instruction that are more student-centered than teacher-centered or knowledge-centered, and not enough emphasis on the basics of transmitting factual knowledge.

20:47So this report is by Daniel Buck of the American Enterprise Institute, and he looked at syllabi from eight graduate schools of education, several of which were ranked highly in the U.S. News and World Report last year. And overall, he looked at 75 courses and examined more than 400 required readings from those syllabi and categorized them as traditional, meaning the teacher is supposed to be transmitting knowledge to students from this common body of knowledge and maintain classroom order and teach things like phonics. And then other readings were categorized as progressive, which is a more student-driven or idea that students can drive their own education and knowledge is maybe a construct.

21:34And then critical, which is critical race theory or other social justice theories like feminism or Marxism. And therapeutic, presenting the teacher as more of a therapist in their role. And overall, most of the readings he found were in the critical or progressive categories. There was only one college, Florida International University, where he put more readings in the traditional category than any other. And just shows how these schools are emphasizing these progressive political approaches to education. One of the Gallup findings from that poll I mentioned earlier was that of all of the areas of how the public rates public schools, the public is most dissatisfied with the way public schools impart the ability to think critically.

22:21And I think that is a red flag that connects directly to this, because if you don't have a base of knowledge about the world, you don't have anything to draw on to think critically. And so this kind of criticism first approach to teaching, I think, has contributed to that problem, even though it sounds like it's distinct. But to me, one of the crises in critical thinking is the underlying knowledge base that is not being imparted that students need as a foundation to think critically. And so I wanted to ask if you would go into a little more color on some of these school programs. Give me an example from this study.

22:57I mean, one of these schools was, you know, their curriculum began with a land acknowledgement. But what exactly are we talking about? I see one here in my notes about at California State University, there was a class on reflective teaching and it assigned an article called Queering Elementary Education, a queer curriculum for fourth grade. Is this the kind of material that's really being presented to teachers who we need to teach students math and reading? Yeah, there are several examples of this that Daniel Buck includes in his report. That same reflective teaching class also has an article called Integrating Feminist Theory, Pedagogy and Praxis into Teacher Education, Striving for Critical Reflection in Multicultural and Social Justice Teacher Education.

23:42And Nicole, I mean, I think a lot of our listeners will be unsurprised to hear that this is really the curriculum that dominates teachers' education. But I think it's worth underscoring that many teachers are funneled into these programs because they get a premium in their salary if they have a graduate degree. What are some of the underlying policy fixes here to produce more competent teachers? Perhaps graduate education is not only is it not necessary, but perhaps it's having the opposite effect. What at a policy level can we do about that? Right. So some states include this master's premium or they'll pay teachers more for having a master's degree.

24:20So one option is they could instead pay teachers more based on the quality of their teaching and take away this automatic premium just for having a master's degree. In some cases, it's the districts themselves that choose to actually I think in most cases it's the districts that are choosing to give teachers a master's premium. The problems are systemic. And one solution that Daniel Buck proposes in his report as well is for Republican governors or really just any governor to start centers at public universities that bring in more ideological diversity on education. So some states have done this for civics education.

25:00A couple examples he mentions are the University of Florida's Hamilton Center or the James Madison Program and American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton. But I believe there's a center, the Chase Center at Ohio State has a focus now on classical education and promoting that. And I believe there's something being started at Florida State University as well. So just bringing more faculty and students who are interested in Western civilization and traditional ways of teaching and knowledge into the system is also essential to turning the tide on this. Yes, I think you're underscoring that some countercultural institutions are starting to build and we need more of them.

25:43I thought also looking in the report, it was notable that some public universities were more transparent about what they were teaching than others. And the report's author tried to get information from certain schools, for instance, I think the University of Michigan, but eventually gave up, unable to get the substance of what they were teaching. But in places like Florida, it was more transparent what was being taught at these schools. And I think that is one low-hanging fruit, easy way to do it. Thanks, Nicole, for briefing us on this. I'm sure you'll keep us updated. That's a wrap for Wednesday on Potomac Watch.

26:11We hope you'll join us again tomorrow. Congress has talked about permitting reform for decades. Now it's time to actually do it and secure our affordable energy future. Pass permitting reform now. Paid for by the American Petroleum Institute.