JD Vance Has A New Scheme For Grandparents. The Last One Didn’t Work Out So Well

This week, Donald Trump and JD Vance gave lip service to one of the most pressing issues facing American families, especially those in rural America: child care. 

Our polling at RuralOrganizing.org has repeatedly shown that rural Americans want solutions focused on increasing jobs and wages, decreasing daily expenses, and improving quality of life. But these goals are out of reach for most rural families without available, affordable, high-quality child care. Rural Americans need serious solutions on child care, not just talk. But what did we get?

Well, Trump rambled incomprehensible nonsense and Vance trotted out some half-baked schemes that reminded us of the scams his failed nonprofit used as a cover for selling out rural people to opioid corporations. More on that below.

The truth on rural childcare is that Trump and Vance’s Project 2025 proposes to eliminate Head Start, which would be especially devastating in rural America, where Head Start makes a massive percentage of rural child care possible. Harris and Walz, on the other hand, have proposed an expanded child tax credit that would give parents of newborns $6,000 and restore pandemic-era tax credits to $3,600 per child. For all his talk, Vance didn’t vote for an expansion of the child tax credit last month.

Let’s go back to Trump. Trump’s response to a question at the New York Economic Forum made it pretty clear that he has no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to child care. His disjointed and rambling “answer” started: “It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about that, because, look, child care is child care. It’s something you know you have to have it, in this country you have to have it,”

The rest of his answer made even less sense. But, this is a guy who never had to worry about child care.

Then, there’s JD Vance. 

At a recent Turning Point USA event, Trump acolyte Charlie Kirk asked Vance, “What can we do about lowering the cost of daycare?” Vance replied, “Such an important question, Charlie, and I think one of the things that we can do is make it easier for families to choose whatever model they want, right? So one of the ways that you might be able to relieve a little bit of pressure on people who are paying so much for day care is … maybe Grandma and Grandpa [want] to help out a little bit more, or maybe there’s an aunt or uncle that wants to help out a little bit more. If that happens, you relieve some of the pressure on all the resources that we’re spending on day care.” Vance also bemoaned “ridiculous certification” for child care workers.

Hearing Vance talk about grandparents stepping in to help struck a chord with us. We’ve heard that from him before (and not just when he was weirdly commiserating about the purpose of post-menopausal women).

Back in 2017, Vance was on a Cincinnati TV station to tout his book and his new nonprofit, Our Ohio Renewal, which was ostensibly created to address the opioid epidemic ravaging Ohio. From WCPO:

Vance said his nonprofit, Our Ohio Renewal, is focusing on the grandparents, aunts and uncles of children whose parents have been taken away one way or another by the opiate epidemic, and focusing on how to support those family members so the children aren't “shuffling around in the system.”

How did that work out for Ohio grandparents, aunts and uncles? 

Vance’s nonprofit did nothing for them — and nothing for the opioid crisis. Instead, he hired the firm of Jai Chabria, his “political adviser,” as a consultant. In addition, the group paid Dr. Sally Satel, a Purdue Pharma shill — yes, that Purdue Pharma — to work for his supposed opioid crisis group. In August of 2022, the Associated Press reported: 

An AP review found that the charity’s most notable accomplishment — sending an addiction specialist to Ohio’s Appalachian region for a yearlong residency — was tainted by ties among the doctor, the institute that employed her and Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin.

The mothballing of Our Ohio Renewal and its dearth of tangible success raise questions about Vance’s management of the organization. His decision to bring on Dr. Sally Satel is drawing particular scrutiny. She’s an American Enterprise Institute resident scholar whose writings questioning the role of prescription painkillers in the national opioid crisis were published in The New York Times and elsewhere before she began the residency in the fall of 2018.

This year, The Guardian, writing about Vance’s failed nonprofit, noted: "Moreover, the group employed Sally Satel, a doctor with ties to Purdue Pharma, the pharmaceutical giant that once manufactured OxyContin and which pleaded guilty to employing marketing strategies that fueled the opioid crisis."

Instead of “focusing on the grandparents, aunts and uncles of children whose parents have been taken away one way or another by the opiate epidemic,” Vance focused on himself and his buddies in corporate America who are making money by destroying rural communities. Vance will take the same approach to child care and the rest of the issues most important to rural Americans.

With that track record of throwing rural communities under the bus for his own gain, it’s no wonder JD Vance, like the candidate he’s running with, has no real plan for child care. 

Last year, Rural Organizing’s Policy Director Annie Contractor wrote a policy brief, Issues and Solutions in Rural Child Care, that provides a deep analysis of what can be done to address this vital issue. Suffice it to say, there’s a lot more the federal government can and should do. Relying primarily on family members doesn’t make the list.

As Contractor’s brief noted, “Our child care economy is broken on all fronts — child care businesses are barely squeaking by, child care workers are living in poverty, and families cannot afford, or in rural areas, even access, child care.”

Rural voters want solutions. On child care, Trump and Vance showed they have none. Trump has no idea what he’s talking about, and Vance continues to show the disdain for rural families that has been his trademark for years now.