News Release: Libertarians Give Mixed Reviews to Day Care Reform Proposals

Title:
Libertarians Give Mixed Reviews to Day Care Reform Proposals
Author:
Stacy Spaulding Van Oast
Date:
11/22/1999
Year:
1999
Article:

For Immediate Release
November 22, 1999
Contact: Stacy Van Oast, State Chair
chair@lpmich.org

DEARBORN. The Libertarian Party of Michigan both approves and disapproves of recent proposals by the two old parties to reform the day care system in Michigan, according to LPM chair, Stacy Van Oast.

“Obviously, we all want the best possible day care for our children,” Van Oast said. “What parent doesn’t what her child nurtured in a safe, intellectually stimulating environment with closely supervised play time and nutritious meals and snacks?”

It is most of the Republican and Democrat proposals for ensuring the availability of that kind of environment that Libertarians find at best useless and at worst actually counterproductive.

“Changing the rules for commercial day care operations, tripling the number of inspectors who enforce those rules, providing special tax breaks specifically to professional day care employees, all of these and most everything else in the proposals merely serve to further institutionalize the care and nurturing of our most precious and cherished resource — our children.”

Which of the proposed reforms do Libertarians like?

“The proposal to give parents a $10,000 income tax deduction for every child under the age of 7 is an excellent idea!” Van Oast observed. “This actually addresses the real, underlying cause of our current need for so much commercial day care — a tax rate that has become so burdensome that both parents are forced to work, one to support the family, the other to support the government.”

Libertarians have found dramatic support for their position from an unlikely source: a recent U.S. Census Bureau report.

“It has just been revealed,” Van Oast points out, “that, incredibly, most women now conceive their first child out of wedlock, a rate that has grown from 18% in the early 30’s to 53% in the early 90’s!”

The reason for the dramatic jump, according to Census Bureau analyst, Amara Bachu, is that having children outside of marriage is more socially accepted today.

“Exactly,” agreed the LPM chair. “And it is also continually subsidized, while maintaining an intact family is continually penalized. Who is more likely to provide a safe, nurturing environment for a child than his own mom or dad? If that kind of environment is what we really want,” she concluded, “how about simply making it financially possible to provide it by dramatically cutting the tax rate for families with small children?”

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