Jared Bernstein

You don't know.

That's an impossible variable to forecast.

But this is, again, a hope for the best plan for the worst moment.

So I wouldn't support a full-out 10-year expenditure, $600-700 billion for an extended child tax credit, without a pay-for.

But those pay-fors are readily available if you're willing to raise taxes, especially at the higher end.

And in fact, in our budgets—

we did that.

So you can actually go back and read how we financed a permanent extension of the child care tax credit.

It may not have been quite as generous as what we had in the pandemic recession, but it was plenty generous.

Not so much with childcare.

I just think that the, this is, I'll get slightly technical for a second.

Childcare has a very high supply elasticity, meaning that if people want it and they have the resources to get it, you start seeing childcare centers pop up.

So the responsiveness of childcare production to demand is quite strong.

And, you know, so that flexible elasticity there is helpful such that if we were able to provide people the subsidies they need.

And when we have in the past, we've seen this.

I don't think you see, you know, particularly even medium term pressures on cost.

Well, that's certainly something Biden was interested in.

You know, I tend to like the idea of not even a child care tax credit, but a child tax credit.

If you're raising kids, your life is, you've done this, I've done this.

If you're raising kids, even if you've got a decent income, your life is a lot more expensive.