Trump’s latest policy announcement is aimed at women voters. It doesn’t stand up

Former president Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden went viral for many reasons the campaign likely did not want it to go. After comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made a joke calling Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean,” the fallout from Latinos was swift.

But tucked into the invective, Trump also did something unusual: He announced a new policy to assist people who care for elderly family members or people with disabilities.

“I’m announcing a new policy today that I will support a tax credit for family caregivers who take care of a parent or a loved one,” he said. “It’s about time that they were recognized.”

The announcement comes after Vice President Kamala Harris announced a plan earlier this month that would have Medicare pay for home care. And the 2024 Republican Party platform is essentially the same as Trump’s plan, saying it would “overturn disincentives that lead to care worker shortages, and support unpaid family caregivers through tax credits and reduced red tape.”

Both Harris and Trump’s plans are a recognition of the fact that care for elderly people is quickly becoming an urgent need — 70 percent of adults who live to 65 will require long-term care at some point, according to a study from the Urban Institute.

“I think it acknowledges the challenges that we're going to face in the future as the population continues to age and as we have a system that is not designed to provide for that kind of care,” Jessica Calarco, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of Holding it Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net, says.

According to the AARP, there are about 48 million caregivers in the United States. Between now and 2050, the number of Americans older than 85 will increase by 200 percent. The group also found that 78 percent of Americans in that position incur routine out-of-pocket costs.

The dueling plans explicitly recognize the role of women at a time when both Trump and Harris are making a play for female votes. According to the Commonwealth Fund, about 60 percent of caregivers are women.

But advocates largely panned Trump’s proposed policy, which explicitly relies on tax credits.

“A caregiver tax credit would help some family caregivers but it really wouldn’t go very far in terms of scratching the surface around the true cost of care,” Nicole Jorwic, the chief of advocacy and campaigns for Caring Across Generations, told The Independent. Trump did not put an exact price tag on his proposal at the rally, but Jorwic said it would be a drop in the bucket compared to Harris’s proposal.

“What you really need is the infrastructure, like what Vice President Harris is proposing in childcare, in aging care, in disability care, to really make it where family caregivers don’t have to fill in the gap,” Jorwic said.

Trump announced his proposal while also touting his plan to remove taxes on tips and on Social Security as well as his proposal to make car loans tax-deductible.

“Trump's is, at best, a concept of a plan, in the sense that it is far less fleshed out than what Harris has proposed,” Calarco said, in reference to Trump’s remarks at the debate about a healthcare proposal. “If anything, it seems to be chasing an idea that people seem to be latching onto without much of a thought-out idea of what that might look like in practice — and certainly without the notion of the potential costs involved, or certainly any attention to the needs of care providers.”

Calarco said that she was impressed that Harris’s proposal talked about the salaries of home care workers.

“Certainly, tax credits can help to reduce the burden on families and individuals who are trying to navigate the current costs of home health care,” she said. “But it's not clear how big those tax credits will be, or whether they will be structured in ways that actually help to address the deep inequalities in current levels of savings.”

Jorwic also said that Trump’s plan would depend on the mechanics.

“The complexities of a tax credit make it really difficult to ensure that it's an equitable thing, and also it requires that people file taxes to begin with,” she said. That’s especially unhelpful, “because you have family caregivers who are, at times, leaving the workforce force altogether to provide care.”

According to the National Alliance for Caregiving and the AARP, about 39 percent of caregivers leave a job, meaning they do not necessarily file taxes.

On top of that, while Harris has spoken about using money saved from Medicare negotiating drug prices through the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022, neither Trump nor the Republican platform have outlined how to pay for their plan. In the past, Trump has spoken about using money incurred from tariffs to pay for childcare.

“When you have him talking about somehow tariffs supporting the cost of childcare,” then the “intricacies of the plans are not really there,” Calarco added, “so it's pretty difficult to assess what the cost would be for what he's proposing.”

In addition, Trump has pledged mass deportations, which could cause a staffing problem in medical care, given that 34,200 undocumented immigrants work as home health aides, according to the Center for American Progress. Deporting home health aides when there is also ready a shortage of workers could exacerbate the problem.

At the same time, advocates hope Trump’s proposal shows at the minimum, elected officials are seeing home care as an urgent problem that must be addressed.

“It does show that we're breaking through,” Jorwic said. “We’re not gonna settle for half or not even half a solution.”