Candidates’ plans for helping families admirable: Family advocate

( NewsNation ) — The Harris and Trump campaigns have been touting their plans to help American families, which is good news to one expert who focuses on family issues.

“Parents are really struggling in today’s economy to balance both work and families, and we need to intervene,” Adrienne Schweer of the Bipartisan Policy Center told NewsNation’s “On Balance.” “We need to support them better.”

Vice President Kamala Harris has signaled that she plans to build on the ambitions of outgoing President Joe Biden’s administration , which sought to pour billions in taxpayer dollars into making childcare and home care for elderly and disabled adults more affordable.

Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance of Ohio has a long history of pushing policies that would encourage Americans to have families. He said he wants to raise the child tax credit to $5,000. But Vance has opposed government spending on childcare, arguing that many children benefit from having one parent at home as a caretaker.

“The child tax credit is a fascinating and important federal policy that brings the support of families into our core tax code,” said Schweer, who said even the old credit of $1,000 a year was a big help to her parents.

During his term, Trump doubled the tax credit to $2,000. During the COVID pandemic, Biden raised it to $3,600.

“We have JD Vance talking about making it $5,000, and we have Vice President Harris now talking about making it $6,000 for new parents,” Schweer said.

“These are really big ‘doubles down’ on a core policy that has a lot of proof underneath it about supporting families financially, giving them the freedom to choose what to do with those resources,” she added.

While a higher child tax credit is “a really good start,” Schweer, a mother of five, said helping families goes beyond just money.

“The average woman wants 2.3 children and she’s having 1.5, which sounds obnoxious,” Schweer said. “But the core element there is that she’s not having the family she wants to have.”

That, she said, is an issue that is not just Uncle Sam’s duty to address. “It takes federal policy, state policy, it takes communities and strong families,” Schweer added.

The Associated Press contributed to this report .

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