But Visit Points Up Proposal’s Limitations : Bush, in Inner City, Touts Day-Care Plan

President Bush traveled to an inner-city child care center Tuesday for a visit designed to tout the benefits of his Administration’s day-care plan but, instead, may have illustrated his proposal’s limits--most of the children served by the center would not be eligible for day-care aid under the Bush plan.

“My thought is to help the parents with choice. If they want to send a kid to this facility, fine, give them a little help,” Bush told officials of the day-care center, a 30-year-old program sponsored by one of Washington’s largest black churches, Shiloh Baptist.

But the program Bush is backing, a tax-credit plan sent to Congress in March, would do little for most of the 77 children enrolled in the center’s daytime and after-school day-care programs, according to information provided by the center. Most of the children are too old to be eligible or their families, while not wealthy, earn too much money.

Total Incomes

Bush’s plan would aid only parents with total incomes of less than $13,000, slightly above the current poverty level--$12,088. The plan also would apply only to those younger than 4. Most of the children at the Shiloh center, like most of those at day-care centers nationwide, are 4 or older.

“Most of these people are career-oriented,” the center’s program director, Florence Omachonu, said of the parents who send their children to Shiloh. Many, she said, are single mothers with jobs, “for example, public schoolteachers,” who in Washington earn a minimum of $22,982.

The problem is a familiar one for Administration policy planners. To keep new programs from worsening the federal deficit, Bush aides have been under orders to keep their initiatives limited. And to limit the cost, aides have had to severely limit their programs’ reach.

Bush’s plan would cost $187 million in its first year, the Administration says, with the cost increasing later as the income limits were allowed to rise. By contrast, a broader congressional proposal sponsored by leading Democrats and some Republicans would cost some $2.5 billion. Under that plan, likely to be voted on in the Senate later this month, the federal government would provide aid to states that, in turn, would be passed along to low-income parents and licensed child care centers.

Quality, Safety

Sponsors of the congressional plan argue that it would increase the supply of day care and also, by imposing regulations, improve the quality and safety of care. Administration officials say it would cost too much and would lead to excessive government regulation.

Bush’s plan would give a tax credit of up to $1,000 per child for any family with income below the cutoff point. Families could use the money for child care or any other purpose.

The Treasury estimates that initially 1 million families would be eligible for some benefits, out of roughly 25 million families with working mothers whose income is below the national average. The average eligible family would receive about $400 a year, the White House has estimated.

The Shiloh center Bush visited charges $2,860 a year per child, which is about average, according to national surveys.