Aid Endorsement Reverses Previous Stance : Reagan Backs Bush on Child-Care

President Reagan, reversing years of opposition to increased federal spending on child-care, endorsed Republican presidential candidate George Bush’s proposal for a $1,000-per-child payment to poor families Thursday, saying it would allow “thousands of mothers to choose to stay home with their children.”

In a fervently religious speech to a convention of evangelical Protestant students, Reagan said Bush’s proposal would strengthen the American family. “Working mothers could put the money toward child-care,” the President said. “But by giving each family this tax credit, the vice president’s plan would also permit thousands of mothers to choose to stay home with their children.”

Reagan said his Administration had helped reverse a trend in which high taxes, welfare programs and “liberal attitudes” were undermining American morality, and appealed to the young Christians to remain virgins until they married.

The President’s endorsement of Bush’s child payment plan was a departure for him. He has opposed most proposals for federal funding of such care.

Bush’s plan, unveiled on Monday, would pay as much as $1,000 per child to families with incomes below $10,000 per year. The payment would come in the form of a tax credit for families that make enough money to pay federal income taxes, but families that pay no taxes would receive a direct payment.

Experts have estimated that the plan would cost $2 billion or more.

A key part of the Bush proposal is that mothers who stayed at home to take care of their children would be eligible for the payment, as well as mothers who worked outside the home and paid for child-care. Conservatives have insisted on that provision so as not to penalize mothers who chose to stay home.

“The basic idea here is that the government would simply let families keep up to $1,000 more of their own money,” Reagan said. “That’s money the family itself can decide how to spend.” He did not refer to the part of the proposal that would subsidize families which do not pay taxes.

Liberal child-care advocates have both welcomed Bush’s proposal and criticized it as too limited, questioning whether $1,000 per child is enough to pay for adequate care for a year.

“President Reagan’s recognition of federal responsibility in meeting this nation’s mounting child-care crisis is welcome news,” said Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund. But she said she favors a broader federal role, as outlined in a bill, the “Act for Better Childcare,” sponsored by 40 senators and 170 members of the House of Representatives.

The proposed act, which would cost an estimated $2.5 billion a year, would provide money for parents to pay for child-care outside the home, grants and loans to organizations to set up new child-care systems and more training for child-care providers. It does not include payments to mothers who stay home to take care of their children.

In his speech before the Student Congress on Evangelism at the Washington Convention Center, Reagan said his Administration had helped restore traditional family values by opposing pornography, promiscuity and abortion.

Reagan, who joined the student evangelicals in waving a penlight to the hymn, “We Will Carry the Torch of the Lord,” told the young Christians: “The American family used to be the unquestioned basic building block of our society--and then families too often found themselves under pressure from government taxation, welfare policies that were spinning out of control and social mores that were being undermined.”