Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is pushing members of the Democratic Party to embrace universal childcare as a key part of their affordability pitch to voters ahead of the midterm elections.
The Massachusetts senator is banking that voters frustrated by President Donald Trump‘s administration will help hand back control of the House and Senate to Democrats, due to exorbitant childcare prices in addition to high gas prices and rising inflation.
“It would be political malpractice for Democrats not to be talking about childcare every chance we get, going into the midterms and beyond,” Warren said, making her case at this week’s Center for American Progress’s IDEAS Conference.
Warren also pointed to past comments that Trump made on the issue as one of multiple reasons her party needs to keep the pressure on universal childcare.
“Take a look at the Republican Party on the question of childcare. They are fumbling the childcare issue now at the most basic level,” Warren said. “Last month, Donald Trump said out loud on camera that we can’t ‘take care of childcare because we have to dump a billion dollars a day into a war halfway around the world with Iran.’ So much for America first.”
In April, a video spread online of Trump claiming the federal government couldn’t pay for childcare during a private Easter luncheon.
“Don’t send any money for daycare, because the United States can’t take care of daycare,” Trump said he told Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought. “That has to be up to a state. We can’t take care of daycare.”
The Trump 2024 campaign focused not just on fixing the economy but also on helping struggling families in an effort to raise birth rates, making his comments at the White House a stark contrast.
High childcare prices are just one factor American families are dealing with amid rising gas prices stemming from the Iran war. Childcare costs more than public college tuition in 38 states and the nation’s capital for one infant, according to a 2025 Economic Policy Institute report.
Warren’s push for universal childcare also follows efforts that state-level Democrats have embraced to lower childcare costs during Trump’s second term.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), who defeated her Republican counterpart by double digits last year, signed the Employee Childcare Assistance Program into law this year, which incentivizes businesses to help with employee childcare costs by matching employer contributions with state funds. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM) announced in September that New Mexico would become the first state to guarantee no-cost universal childcare starting Nov. 1.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) recently announced they were extending nearly 100,000 3-K and pre-K offers for the upcoming school year. “Today’s announcement marks a new era for childcare in New York City — one where families can trust that government will deliver for them,” Mamdani boasted.
Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville argued for universal childcare in a New York Times op-ed in November.
“When 70 percent of Americans say raising children is too expensive, we should not fear making universal child care a public good,” he wrote. “And darn it, we should not fear that running on a platform of seismic economic scale will cost us a general election.”
But critics also claim the Democratic push to lower childcare costs ignores current legislation like the child and dependent care tax credit that discriminates against families with a stay-at-home parent, preventing them from claiming reimbursement for daycare costs.
“Many families need childcare, and costs have ballooned in recent years,” said Lyman Stone, senior fellow and director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies. “In big blue cities especially, proliferating regulations and standards intended to boost childcare quality and protect childcare workers have caused an enormous cost surge.”
Stone argued removing regulatory constraints on childcare, such as zoning and parking rules limiting where childcare centers can operate, is a proven solution for making childcare more affordable and accessible and, as it happens, raising fertility. He also pushed for the United States to adopt a model similar to Finland, where the government provides childcare benefits, but allows families who prefer to use family-based care to opt out and take a home care allowance instead.
“Unfortunately, in the U.S., childcare advocates have mostly refused to consider a Finland-style home care allowance,” Stone said. “When liberal childcare advocates ever get around to fixing the prejudicial rules in America’s largest childcare subsidy, if they ever seriously begin considering a home-care allowance in a childcare program, then it would be worthwhile to have a conversation. Until then, it’s clearly just more efforts at regulatory capture by an industry that’s already charging American families far too much.”
Similarly, Rachel Sheffield, a research fellow in welfare and family policy at the Heritage Foundation, pointed to certain regulations as driving up childcare costs.
“There are things that you can do to reduce the cost of child care, like regulations that, for example, require certifications for childcare providers,” Sheffield said. “By requiring things like a college degree, or even a community college education, those types of things could drive up care costs.”
“And then the other thing too, though, is that when you get the government more involved in this in childcare, what it does is that it crowds out more informal providers,” she added.
Universal childcare could likely push more families into the labor force and more children into childcare centers.
“It could crowd out smaller providers, which is actually what most families prefer,” Sheffield said. “Most families prefer to have informal care, like someone who comes to the home, or mom or dad taking care of the child, or grandma, or kind of a smaller, in-home provider situation, versus paid childcare.”
January polling from UpONE Insights showed that a majority of voters, 80%, said the ability of working parents to find and afford childcare is either in a state of crisis or a major problem, and 82% said federal childcare funding will help lower costs for working families. The high support is a key indication of how salient the issue is during a midterm cycle, where affordability is one of the top campaign buzzwords.
THE FUTURE OF AMERICA DEPENDS ON FLOURISHING FAMILIES
Still, the White House championed the Trump administration’s pro-family efforts and dismissed Warren’s criticisms in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
“No president has done more on childcare affordability than President Trump, from permanently expanding the Child Tax Credit in the Working Families Tax Cut to dramatically reforming federal childcare regulations and programs,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said. “While Democrats mindlessly push throwing more money at every problem under the sun and expecting different results, the Trump administration will continue exploring and implementing solutions that actually reduce costs and expand options for American families.”