The Biden administration has made clear it wants to expand government, costs be damned. Included in those plans is a new child care entitlement that is designed to hand government subsidies to Americans far and wide, and with few restrictions on income.
The Wall Street Journal calls it “a new suburban entitlement, not aid to the needy.” But it also fulfills other parts of his agenda:
[Biden’s] plan says [child care] providers “will receive funding to cover the true cost of quality early childhood care.” Employees would get $15 an hour, minimum. Care-givers who have “similar qualifications as kindergarten teachers” would “receive comparable compensation and benefits.” This is a formula for a bureaucratized national child-care system, enforced by federal rules and no doubt unionized.
But even more broadly, the Biden plan seeks to create a new dependent class that, once hooked on the subsidies, will never give them back:
Instead of trying to sell the middle class on a new entitlement, a President who wanted to unite the country could work at fixing the safety net for the people who really need it.
But for Mr. Biden and today’s Democrats, national child care is a political project to put families and child rearing more dependent on the government. Make it an entitlement, hook the middle class, unionize the workforce, and consolidate political control.
It’s a page right out of the New Deal playbook.