Trump Unveils Democrat-Conceived Maternity Leave Policy, ‘Conservatives’ Cheer!

On Tuesday, Donald Trump unveiled the latest part of his Democratic governing agenda, a policy providing for six weeks of paid maternity leave – paid for, of course, by the taxpayer, and through tax deductions. He did so at the behest of his daughter Ivanka, who hangs out with conservative stalwarts like Chelsea Clinton and David Geffen. Ivanka introduced Trump, telling the sob story of a woman who had to almost murder her child in order to attend a job interview: “Out of options, she made the tragic choice to leave her young children in a hot car while she attempted to secure the job in order to better the life of her family.”

Well, she could have left the windows open. Or she could have dropped the kid with grandma. Also, where’s daddy?

But no: we’re all Democrats now.

So Trump rolled out the plan.

According to Trump’s website, “The Trump plan will enhance Unemployment Insurance (UI) to include 6 weeks of paid leave for new mothers so that they can take time off of work after having a baby.” There’s no direct mandate for employers to cover maternity leave, but this is truly just an indirect mandate: this means that employers will pay increased taxes. He says he’ll pay for this by cutting waste and fraud. Nonsense. As Ed Morrissey of Hot Air says, “The cost of this program would be another $7.5 billion in payouts from the unemployment system each year, on top of the payments already being made for actual unemployment…it’s a surrender on the principle of limited government.”

Conservatives aren’t big fans of tax deductions and loopholes – we’d prefer to simply lower tax rates. But now Trump wants to increase the “cap” on spending for childcare facilities. Further, you’d be allowed to deduct the cost of childcare – except for people who make too much money, who could enjoy bearing the cost for others in the system indirectly through higher prices and taxes. There would also be an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is truly just another name for welfare – people aren’t paying enough tax to qualify for a tax rebate. As Daniel Horowitz of Conservative Review writes, “Far from cutting down on waste and fraud, the EITC is one of the most abused programs in the federal government.”

This is not conservative. It’s warmed-over leftism.

But that isn’t stopping supposed conservatives from embracing this. Richard Viguerie, a major Trump supporter, features the writing of George Rasley stating, “Who decides what’s conservative?…How can the movement of ‘family values’ celebrate the family as the fundamental building block of healthy society and place such emphasis on school choice and other policies to empower families to rear successful children and then be against policies to keep those roles in the hands of parents and away from the government?” Laura Ingraham flipped on this yesterday. Most hilariously, columnist A.J. Delgado of Breitbart flipped…and then shockingly announced that she’d been hired by the Trump campaign. (But remember, gang, only those who oppose Trump have been paid off, those cucks!)

The Trumpist takeover of conservatism is ongoing. It won’t wait until a Trump presidency. The greatest irony of 2016 remains the fact that so many supposed conservatives who complained about Republicans surrendering to the Obama agenda are happy to embrace that agenda so long as a pseudo-outsider Republican pushes it.