Ron Johnson says low-income moms should just become daycare teachers, because of course he did

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Wisconsin's freshman senator is clueless about hardships single moms face

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Sen. Ron Johnson, who is up for re-election against Democratic challenger and former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, has a novel idea for women struggling to pay daycare bills across the state and nation: just become a daycare teacher yourselves!

“Let single moms actually work in day care to support each other,” [Johnson] told WIZM, a Wisconsin radio station. “We have prohibitions against that, providing day care for a facility that has your children in it. I think we need to reduce some of these policies. Let’s work smart, let’s rethink all of these programs, all the laws. Just about everything has got to be rethought.”

We do indeed have regulations against allowing single mothers from working at daycares where their children attend. Those regulations exist because of fraud that occurred when daycare centers tried to collect federal subsidies in those situations, according to Channel 3000.

But Johnson’s solution is laughable for another reason. It assumes that this idea could work for everyone. Yet enlisting every single mother to become daycare teachers would defeat the purpose of daycare itself -- the centers would become full of single mothers as employees, and as staff vacancies fill, other single mothers would find themselves without an option, and we’re back to square one.

The single mothers who WOULD work would similarly be denied opportunities to find better paying jobs elsewhere. They’d be stuck because, since childcare itself is expensive, they’d HAVE to work in these centers in order to afford them.

The solution offered by Johnson also assumes that poor, single mothers can afford the education that’s necessary to become daycare workers. It’s no easy task, and generally requires many years of schooling for several of the positions listed.

Johnson’s remedy is a cyclical problem. It fits his narrative, to be sure -- Johnson is a staunch opponent of regulations -- but his idea brings about the exact reason why we have regulations in the first place: to prevent fraud and mistreatment of workers.

When confronted with this, Johnson’s campaign staff said this was just his way of saying we need to think “outside the box” to find solutions (just like his solution to teach history through videos instead of employing teachers). But really, it just exemplifies how out of touch Johnson is with the hardships that people in this state are faced with.

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