The details of the Child Tax Credit are not yet public, including the amount of the expansion and whether she would make changes to help children in families with very low incomes who cannot currently receive the full credit. But one thing is very, very clear: This credit is clearly designed to help make the Trump tax plan, which is heavily skewed toward tax breaks for the wealthy, more politically palatable.

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The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that 80 percent of the tax breaks would go to people in the top 1 percent of earners. In other words, people like Ivanka Trump.

Just repealing the estate tax—which is only one of many planned tax cuts—would amount to a $1.1 billion windfall for Ivanka Trump and her siblings. That’s enough to pay for 100,000 children to go to child care for an entire year. And that’s before accounting for the trillions it would cost to slash the top income tax rate, give low rates to pass-through businesses, and re-open loopholes for the wealthy.

But Trump, the dutiful soldier, is sticking to her message. That means continuing to insist that her child care plan will support most Americans, even though the plan she pitched during the campaign would have given the average family in a county that swung heavily toward Trump in the 2016 presidential election just $5.55 per year. (Residents in Ivanka Trump’s former Manhattan neighborhood would stand to gain more than $7,000 in tax benefits.) A year later, the same principles apply. The Trump administration is looking to use empty rhetoric to appeal to working women to sell a major tax break for wealthy people like her.

To be clear, the Child Tax Credit can provide a vehicle for improving economic security among families with young children. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 16 million children in low-income working families would not receive the benefit because their families’ earnings are too low. Proposals to make the credit refundable would allow lower-income families to actually benefit, and proposals to make it more generous could go a long way to defray costs associated with raising children.

If she wanted, Ivanka Trump could go even further than taxes. She could support Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Bobby Scott’s (D-VA) bill to guarantee child care assistance to low-income and middle-class families, or she could challenge her father’s requests to cut the program that offers child care assistance to low-income working families and eliminate on-campus child care and afterschool programs.

Or, if taxes are really what speak to her, she could move on to expanding child care assistance through the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC). Right now, the CDCTC primarily reaches upper-middle-class families, and the $1,050-per-child credit pales in comparison to the $10,000 annual price tag at a child care center.

If Ivanka Trump wanted to make a difference, there’s no shortage of ideas. But instead, she’s selling another “by Ivanka, for Ivanka” child care plan that won’t work for the millions of families who struggle to pay for the child care they need.

Despite what some conservatives might have you believe, there are very few financial supports in place for families with young children that assist with the purchase of baby supplies. Families with low incomes are doubly penalized in that they have fewer resources to spend, and therefore pay more for basic supplies because they can’t buy in bulk or purchase memberships at wholesale stores.  In contrast, I have annual memberships with Costco and Amazon Prime and a car that allows me to shop around to find the best deals.

I decided to spend a week tracking just how much my husband and I save on baby supplies due to economic privilege. I tallied what we spent and compared our costs to what a low-income parent would need to spend for the same items at stores in our neighborhood.

Diapers and wipes

I’m able to purchase diapers for $0.22 apiece through a discounted online delivery service that requires a monthly fee for subscription. By comparison, a small package of diapers costs $0.36 per diaper at the local grocery store. At 60 diapers per week, I save $8 per week on diapers. Similarly, we buy our wipes at Costco and save $1.00 per week.

Additional cost for low-income parents: $9

Food

We buy our formula at a big box store and stock up when they have a sale. Recently, they had a $25 rebate for shopper who spend $100 or more. A great bargain for us, but $100 is easily a quarter of what a minimum wage worker makes in a week. Our total for formula comes to $20 per week, compared to $29 per week at our local grocery store. Breast milk is also far from free. A pump, bottles, and other supplies can easily cost hundreds of dollars per month. And that assumes that a minimum wage job provides adequate breaks to pump and a place to store the milk, neither of which is common among low-wage jobs.

Solid food for babies is much cheaper to puree at home than to buy at the grocery store. I have a food processor, dish washer, refrigerator, and storage containers that make baby food production relatively easy. For $5, I bought enough food for a one-week supply of meals. To buy the same amount of jarred food at the grocery store costs $18.

Additional cost for low-income parents: $22

Baby supplies

I have a credit card that allows me to accrue points that I can spend on Amazon, which provides $30 to $50 per month (or about $10 per week) in free goods. In the last six months alone, I’ve gotten swaddles, laundry detergent, diaper cream, and bottles—all for free. Many parents in poverty do not have the necessary credit or income to qualify for a credit card, let alone one that provides rewards. And as a result of credit discrimination, people of color often have lower credit scores that might otherwise facilitate credit cards with these kinds of perks.

Additional cost for low-income parents: $10

All told, my family saved about $41 per week compared to what a minimum wage worker would likely spend. While that might seem like a small amount for a family with a lot of disposable income, it adds up to more than $2,000 a year and over 10 percent of total annual income for a family of three living at the poverty line. That means in D.C., where the minimum wage is $10.50 per hour, a worker earning that amount would need to work approximately 200 additional hours a year just to buy the same items.

Last year, the Center for American Progress proposed a Young Child Tax Credit that would invest in families when income matters most for children’s long-term outcomes and family budgets are often most strained. Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Rosa DeLauro introduced legislation that would create such a credit, as did Senator Michael Bennet.

This kind of reform would not only help all families afford the critical items they need to thrive, it would also mark a step forward in ensuring that people in poverty no longer have to pay more than other consumers for the things that all families need.

A new study entitled Worth Work, STILL Unlivable Wages finds that wages in the child care industry as so low that many providers live in poverty.  The mean hourly wage of a child care worker in 2013 was $10.33 an hour or $21,490 annually. This puts child care workers in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ lowest income tier along with parking lot attendants and dry-cleaners, meaning that most child care workers live in poverty.

The combination of low wages and the rising cost of living means that many child care workers aren’t paid enough to meet their families’ most basic needs.  In fact, more than 46 percent of child care workers are in families using one of the four major social support programs—almost double the rate of use in the U.S. workforce overall. Poverty wages for child care workers is a problem in and of itself, but the impact extends well beyond workers. The 12 million children who attend child care are affected as well.

Child care workers who endure the stressors of living in poverty are more likely to experience toxic stress, depression, and chronic health issues. As the number of children spending time in child care settings has increased so too has our knowledge of the link between adult caregiving and early childhood brain development. Study after study has shown the connection between better-paid staff and higher quality care. The instability and stress experienced by caregivers dealing with economic insecurity or poverty shapes their ability to provide enriching and nurturing environments for children. Often, it can result in a decreased ability to provide supportive spaces for children to develop and learn.

Importantly, high quality care is often most powerful in the lives of low-income children and children of color who already enter school behind their wealthy and/or white peers. But we also know that low-income children are more likely to be in low quality child care settings. Research shows that children who attend low quality child care settings—with high turnover or high numbers of stressed out staff—are less competent in language and social development. This means our most vulnerable children are often facing stress from multiple sources.

Ultimately, we must do something to better empower the 2 million women earning a living in this sector. Changing the course is far from impossible. Decades ago, the Department of Defense made major changes to its internal child care system, including paying child care workers on par with other employees with similar education and qualifications. This reform increased pay by about 76 percent over the past 25 years. As a result, they see far less turnover and consistently receive higher quality ratings.

It’s time that we pay those caring for our children a fair wage. And that starts with parents asking the question: how much does my child care provider make? Does caring for my family force her family to live in poverty?

Earlier this week, the House took a step in the right direction by passing a bill to reauthorize the Child Care and Development Block Grant, which is the primary source of funding to help subsidize child care costs for low-income families. Given that the Senate passed a similar bill last spring, it’s likely to see the President’s desk soon. The program—last modified in 1996 as part of welfare reform—is badly in need of updating to reflect that child care is not only a work support, but also plays an important role in preparing children for school.

The bill makes important changes to the child care system, requiring minimum health and safety standards, background checks for providers, regular monitoring visits, and information to parents so they are aware of past violations. Such changes are long overdue: a number of children have died or sustained serious injuries in child care programs because basic health and safety measures were not in place. Child care standards are also embarrassingly low when compared to service industries like beauty salons and even pet grooming. The bill will apply mostly to children in publicly subsidized child care, but is likely to help raise minimum health and safety standards at all child care facilities and prevent taxpayer dollars from supporting unsafe child care.

In addition, the bill provides some stability by allowing children to remain in the program for a year. Under the current system, families often receive child care assistance for a few months at a time because of a small change in income or job schedule, or job loss. These changes will promote continuous access to early childhood programs for children, thereby helping parents sustain employment.

Child care reauthorization also reflects bipartisan support for early childhood programs—a rarity, given today’s gridlock. With just a week left before Congress adjourns for campaign season, the fact that Republicans and Democrats worked together—and across both houses of Congress—signals that early childhood education and promoting safety and quality is a priority for both parties.

While this bill marks an important step forward, there is still much work to do in order to provide affordable access to high-quality child care. The current child care subsidy program reaches just one in six eligible children. And while this bill puts minimum health and safety standards in place that will cost money to implement, there is no funding to defray costs for states. That means that improvements will come out of states’ block grant funds and reduce the number of children they can serve.  If we really want to expand the number of children who receive quality child care, we need to increase funding and tie those increases to high-quality programs.

Without additional funding, states also cannot raise the assistance amounts for families. Current levels are typically too low to support access to high-quality programs that effectively prepare children for school. With the average annual cost of a child care center ranging from $4,000 to $16,000 per year and rising, we run the risk of families turning to the unregulated and sometimes illegal child care market, which is of questionable quality.

It’s also time to move the child care conversation past health and safety standards and consider how to help families access high-quality child care—child care that goes beyond safe, custodial care to support children’s development and school readiness.

We often talk about early learning in the context of efforts to expand access to preschool. However, after decades of brain research, we know that children begin learning from birth. For better or worse, children are absorbing their environment and learning from their experiences immediately. Child care programs that are safe but fail to provide nurturing relationships with providers and enriching environments for establishing cognitive and socio-emotional skills will undermine our collective investment in child care assistance and efforts to promote future social mobility.

Given that most children spend a good deal of time in child care programs before they enter kindergarten, failing to provide a quality early learning environment is a missed opportunity. Children (and parents) don’t care if a program is called child care, Head Start, preschool, or school. To artificially talk about preschool and child care in different veins at the federal policy level is a disservice to the 12 million children who spend much of their days in child care programs. It’s also a disservice to families that would like to attend programs like state preschool and Head Start, but have work schedules that don’t allow for part-day early childhood programs.

Hopefully we’ll get another opportunity to reauthorize CCDBG before another 18 years passes. And next time around, we’ll be ready to have a discussion about how federal funds can support early learning and working families in high-quality child care programs.