The Trouble With Elizabeth Warren’s Child-Care Plan

Senator Elizabeth Warren’s call for a new federal child-care program is nothing if not shrewd. The dream of a comprehensive federal program that would liberate working parents from having to scrap for a seat in a safe, clean child-care facility that will provide for their little ones for a full day, and all for a price so low as to be negligible, has obvious appeal across the Democratic Party’s class divide. But it’s also an object lesson in the unseriousness of how we think about social policy. Instead of just helping working families, her proposal risks increasing the federal deficit, driving up the cost of child care, and squeezing stay-at-home parents. And that last risk is one Warren should understand particularly well because she made her reputation as a public intellectual by warning against it.

There is no question that a lack of affordable child care is a thorny problem facing almost all