Trump admin proposes $9k payments for stay-at-home moms

The Trump administration is considering a plan to make stay-at-home mothers eligible for federal subsidies originally intended to pay for daycare services, sparking a debate over the weekend between fiscal conservatives and “MAGA” populists.

The New York Times first reported the details of the proposal on Saturday. The foundation is the Child Care & Development Fund, a longstanding Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Administration for Children & Families (ACF) fund established in the 1990s to give low-income and working parents approximately $9,000 per child (up to age 13) annually for daycare. Qualifying parents must have an income below 85 percent of their state’s median income.

The proposed rule, said to be a priority of Vice President JD Vance, would modify the fund’s eligibility rules so that low-income married couples with one stay-at-home parent would also qualify.

“Young children are clearly happier and healthier when they spend the day at home with a parent,” Vance has said, adding that “normal Americans” want to see “family policy that doesn’t shunt their kids into crap day care so they can enjoy more ‘freedom’ in the paid labor force.”

“It would be a welcome change to see equal treatment between commercial day care and the contribution stay-at-home parents provide in caring for and raising the next generation,” said Roger Severino, vice president of the Heritage Foundation, which proposed the idea in its Project 2025 agenda blueprint. “It doesn’t get more pro-family than that.”