Want More Affordable Housing and Health Care? Here’s a Fix.

The Biden administration has rebranded its Build Back Better plan as part of a strategy to fight inflation. By subsidizing essential services like child care, the argument goes, American families and the broader economy will experience relief from the rapidly rising cost of living.

Yet something doesn’t add up. Consider that the current proposal would also dramatically shift the cost structure of child care upward with regulations mandating higher salaries, greater credentials and compliance with federal “quality standards.” Having made child care more expensive, it then proposes socializing over 90 percent of the cost for a subset of middle- and lower-income households. This won’t reduce rising prices so much as mask them. And with informal child care providers, including religious organizations, at risk of being crowded out, the true availability of low-cost child care could even contract.

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