By Sunlen Serfaty, David Wright and Jeremy Diamond
WASHINGTON — (CNN) Ivanka Trump is set to appear with Donald Trump at a campaign event in Pennsylvania Tuesday night, where the Republican nominee will deliver a speech outlining his child care policy, according to the campaign.
A Trump campaign official said that Ivanka, who will introduce her father in Ashton, Pennsylvania, has spent “considerable” time working on the child care policies that will be featured in the speech, and that it will reflect “hours and hours of hard work to bring this proposal to fruition.”
The candidate’s daughter will be giving one of her most high profile remarks on the campaign trail since she delivered a well-received speech at the Republican National Convention in late July, and flashed her potential as an effective campaign surrogate.
In that speech in Cleveland, the mother of three herself spoke about the need for better child care policies, saying that her father would “focus on making quality child care affordable and accessible for all.” She argued that “policies that allow women with children to thrive should not be novelties, they should be the norm.”
The campaign official said that Donald Trump will argue Tuesday that he has a “real policy to lower the cost of child care expenses” and that “Hillary just has platitudes.”
Additionally, Trump will likely continue to criticize Clinton for her remarks over the weekend, when she described “half” of Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” at a fundraising event — a comment for which she has expressed “regret.”
Details of Trump’s plan
Trump’s plan calls for making child care expenses fully tax-deductible, capped at the average cost of child care in the taxpayers’ state of residence, for up to four children. The tax deduction will be available to families earning less than $500,000 or individuals earning less than $250,000.
The average cost of daycare in the U.S. is $11,666 according to the National Association of Child Resource and Referral Agencies, though the cost varies widely by state. Currently, parents can deduct no more than $3,000 for one child or $6,000 for two children or more from their federal income tax.
The Trump plan, which Ivanka Trump said Tuesday she helped craft, will also allow stay-at-home parents to make their child care expenses tax deductible.
The plan also calls for guaranteeing six weeks maternity leave to working mothers whose employers do not guarantee the time off by offering six weeks of unemployment insurance benefits, a Trump campaign official who briefed reporters on the plan Tuesday morning said.
The Trump campaign did not offer an estimate of the cost of its proposals, but said it would pay for the six weeks of maternity leave offered to mothers by eliminating fraud in the unemployment insurance program.
The campaign said the rest of the proposals would be paid for through the economic benefits of Trump’s overall tax plan.
“At this point in American history, it’s motherhood, not gender, that is the greatest predictor in determining the income disparity in the workforce,” the campaign official said. “We want to end the economic punishment for motherhood in the United States. We believe that our plan makes great strides toward doing so.”
Ivanka Trump also briefly addressed reporters on a call Tuesday, saying that she is “excited to see (the plan) come to fruition and present it later on today … I’m very passionate about this.”
Clinton’s plans
Trump’s not the first presidential candidate to bring up child care and family leave on the campaign trail.
Hillary Clinton backed 12-week paid family leave in 2015, early in her presidential campaign. Clinton has indicated that she would pay for the plan by raising taxes of top earners, meaning her plan would “impose no additional costs on businesses, including small businesses.”
Clinton declined to support a Democratic backed paid family leave bill in 2016 because it would raise payroll taxes for workers and companies by 0.2%, or about $1.38 per week for the median wage earner.
Clinton, though, has questioned the possibility to achieving paid family leave in the current political climate. She told CNN in 2014 that although she supports it, “I don’t think, politically, we could get it now.”
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