REVIEW: Ro Khanna promises a trillion for child care, paid with money already promised

A trillion dollars

Friday’s number

The number fits in two words, and it is enormous: a trillion.

On September 25, 2026, at 5:03 a.m., ABC News publishes an exclusive interview. Ro Khanna is talking. Democratic representative, elected in California. He is unveiling the Free Child Care for America Act.

Nearly US$1 trillion. Ten years. Universal child care, paid for by federal taxpayers.

Khanna tells ABC that nothing weighs on families like child care. He wants this bill before the midterms. A north star, he says. The blueprint for what should pass.

Khanna was first elected in 2016. Fifth term. He is campaigning for his own reelection, and for others, from one end of the country to the other.

The monthly bill

A family does not count in decades. It counts in months.

In 2025, the average annual price of a child care slot in the United States was US$13,184, according to Child Care Aware of America. Divided by twelve: about US$1,100 a month.

The bill arrives at the start of the month. You fold it in half. You pin it under the fridge magnet. It comes back the next month. The same one. Until kindergarten.

That is the unit of this review. Not the billion. The month.

Washington counts in decades. Parents count in months.

What the bill promises

Three paths

The bill opens three paths. All funded by taxpayers, according to ABC.

The first runs through the states and tribal organizations. Grants pay for licensed care for eligible families. The same money is supposed to add slots. It is also supposed to cover child care centers’ operating costs. And raise staff pay.

The second runs through relatives. Khanna wants a law that is neutral between home, a day care center, friends or family. Maximize choice, he says.

He says the issue comes from a middle-class childhood in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. And from his town halls in swing states. He would talk there about good jobs. People would ask him who would watch the kids during those jobs.

The third runs through a check.

A thousand dollars a month

US$1,000 a month. For the parent who stays home. With a child under 3. And a household income at or below 100% of the state’s median income.

The idea is not new. According to columnist Mary Ellen Klas, Project 2029 also calls for US$1,000 a month to the stay-at-home parent. That plan comes from former officials of the Obama and Biden administrations.

On paper, it is the smartest idea in the file. It speaks to the parent who works nights. It speaks to the grandparent who watches the little ones. It speaks to the couple living on one paycheck.

Nobody is left out. Not yet.

On paper, every family finds its door.

Judging a bill like a bridge

Five pillars to check

I judge a bill the way I would judge a bridge. Before saying whether it holds, I say what I am weighing.

I look at whether the money is free. I look at whether the bill stays the same from one week to the next. I look at whether someone other than the author has measured the need. Whether the design holds for a real family. Whether the text can be passed in pieces.

Five criteria. None of them is about party.

A Democrat who hides a revenue source gets the same scalpel as a Republican who hides a cut.

A platform for 2028

His own supporters are worried about the price tag. Khanna acknowledges it to ABC. Despite those doubts, the bill arrives without ABC citing a single estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, the CBO.

My reading fits in one sentence. This bill is first a platform for 2028, funded with money already promised elsewhere, and three of its pieces still deserve to be built.

The first proof is short.

Khanna already promised this tax in March.

A standard set in advance does not bend afterward.

The tax already promised

March 2

On March 2, 2026, Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna introduce the Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act.

An annual wealth tax of 5%. It targets America’s 938 billionaires. Together, they are worth $8.2 trillion, according to the senator’s press release.

Projected revenue: $4.4 trillion over ten years. The figure comes from an analysis by economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman.

The release also says where the money goes. Line by line.

Seven uses

The same tax pays for a US$3,000 check per person, in the first year, in households at US$150,000 or less. The same tax pays to reverse $1.1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. The same tax pays for dental, vision and hearing care in Medicare.

It pays for more than seven million affordable homes. It pays for a cap on child care costs at 7% of income. At least US$60,000 a year for every public school teacher. Home care under Medicaid.

Seven uses. Child care is already on the list.

On March 2, the tax pays for child care. On September 25, in front of ABC, it comes back for $400 billion of universal child care.

And yet $400 billion is roughly a single year of that tax, if the $8.2 trillion from March holds. The rest of the decade is already spoken for.

A tax promised seven times cannot be promised an eighth.

The Pentagon drawer

September 17

Eight days before ABC, Khanna was already opening this drawer.

On September 17, 2026, his office announces the Illegal War Refund Act. The bill would force Washington to reimburse Americans for the economic cost of the Iran war. A war Khanna calls illegal. Never authorized by Congress, in his view.

The amount comes from Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, cited in the release. $230 billion. That is US$1,760 per household.

The source of the refund is spelled out. Cut the defense budget by that much. Hand the money to taxpayers.

September 25

Eight days later, in front of ABC, the same budget is supposed to give up $200 billion for child care.

There is the war refund. There is universal child care. There is one defense budget for both.

If the refund calculation lands near Zandi’s estimate, the two bills ask the same department for about $430 billion. Neither the September 17 release nor the September 25 interview says which comes first.

One drawer. Two withdrawals.

A drawer opened twice is still one drawer.

War as a revenue source

Savings that do not exist

Third item on the menu: the end of the Iran war. The savings it would free up.

ABC gives no amount for that line. Neither does Khanna, in the remarks reported.

On September 17, his own release counted this war in months. The eighth.

Khanna does have a war figure at hand. Zandi’s. $230 billion. But he has already promised that figure to households. Eight days earlier.

Revenue that depends on the end of a war depends on a date. Nobody controls it alone. Not the House. Not the White House. Not Tehran.

A menu, not a tally

In ABC’s sentence, the revenue sources are linked by a small word. Or. Not and.

One source or another. A menu, not a tally.

Even adding up everything that carries a number, you reach $600 billion. Out of nearly 1,000. The rest hangs on the end of a war.

If the war lasts another year, then next fall’s day care…

A peace nobody has signed pays for no day care.

Three numbers in one week

780, then 1,000

Second criterion: a stable bill. It moves.

On September 19, Mary Ellen Klas writes in Bloomberg Opinion that Khanna has a ten-year plan. Amount: $780 billion. For child care centers, stay-at-home parents and care by relatives.

On the 25th, ABC says nearly $1,000 billion.

The same day, Khanna himself gives a price tag of $80 billion to $90 billion. The article does not say over what period. If it is per year, ten years makes $800 billion to $900 billion.

No CBO score

One number says 780. One says nearly 1,000. One says 80 to 90, maybe per year.

None comes from the CBO. Three numbers. One week. One author.

Khanna assures ABC he is transparent about the cost. Transparent about which one?

Between the September 19 column and the September 25 interview, a gap of about $200 billion. Roughly the cut demanded of the Pentagon.

I admit it. I do not know what universal child care would really cost. Nobody knows without that calculation. That is the problem.

A bill that keeps moving is not yet a bill.

What Khanna answers

A public good, he says

Khanna has an answer. It is a serious one.

Child care is expensive because it has to be, he tells ABC. Entrusting a toddler to someone, at the age when everything takes shape, cannot come cheap. The market fails. Wages stay too low. So it is a public good.

He adds that he is hiding nothing about the cost. And if the House will not pass the $90 billion, it can take three pieces of it.

The CBO gives him indirect support. On November 23, 2021, it analyzed the Build Back Better Act. With more subsidies, it wrote, child care centers would hire. Wages would rise. Parents’ employment would probably increase a little, on average.

Justifying is not funding

All of that justifies the spending. None of it pays for it.

Being transparent about cost means saying how much. Being transparent about revenue means saying where from. Once. Without reusing a dollar already promised.

The same CBO document warns that it does not examine the effects of the financing. That is the box Khanna leaves blank.

In other words, the economics of the bill can be defended. Its bookkeeping, not yet.

A public good is still a public bill.

The need is real

The need is measured

I wanted a bill to tear down. The file does not give me all of one.

In November 2024, the Labor Department measured the price of full-time care for a single child. In 2022: from US$6,552 to US$15,600 a year. That is 8.9% to 16% of median family income.

That same year, the median annual rent was US$15,216. At the top of the range, a child care slot costs more than rent.

One detail bothers everyone. From 2021 to 2025, according to Child Care Aware, child care prices rose 23%. Inflation, 24%.

And yet scarcity is getting worse. Child care centers fell by 1% between 2024 and 2025. They declined in 26 of the 43 states studied.

The amount is not absurd

A second concession. Costlier for my argument.

In 2021, the CBO assessed only the child care and universal pre-K provisions of the Build Back Better Act. Cost: $381.5 billion in added deficits, from 2022 to 2031. A national child care program costs hundreds of billions. Khanna did not invent the order of magnitude.

Federal money has even been used before. According to the Labor Department, the American Rescue Plan put $24 billion into stabilizing child care centers. Without that aid, experts it cites estimate, prices would have risen 10% between June 2021 and June 2023.

His flaw is not the size of the number. It is the address of the revenue.

The need is real. The revenue, not yet.

The median-income cliff

One dollar too many

Fourth criterion: the design, down to the dollar.

The US$1,000 monthly allowance stops at the state’s median income. How does it phase out? Nothing in what ABC describes says.

If the threshold is a wall, the household that crosses it would lose US$12,000 a year. One more dollar of income. One dollar too many. One dollar more, and twelve checks disappear.

This is not a columnist’s worry. On September 11, according to Fox News, the conservative group Advancing American Freedom said the same thing about JD Vance’s rival plan. A small raise could cost a family more than US$10,000 in benefits.

The month, again

Back to the unit we started with. The month.

A mother just below the threshold stays home. She gets US$1,000. A mother just above it gets nothing. Her month costs the same.

She opens the envelope at the counter. She hears the beep of the card reader. At night, she redoes the math in pencil, on the corner of the table.

The law meant to be neutral between home and day care. At the threshold, it no longer is.

At the median income, one dollar costs twelve months.

The Vance plan, across the aisle

Not one new dollar

Across the aisle, the Trump administration is preparing something else.

According to Fox News, on September 11, Vice President JD Vance is pushing an expansion of the Child Care and Development Fund. Up to US$9,000 a year per child for a stay-at-home parent.

Roger Severino, of the Heritage Foundation, defends the plan, quoted by Fox News. Today, he says, the stay-at-home parent gets nothing.

Married couples only. One spouse must work at least 35 hours a week.

The money would come from the existing $12 billion fund, Klas writes. A fund meant for working parents, below 85% of the state’s median income.

Who would pay

That fund serves about 870,000 families, according to Fox News. Of those, 80% are single parents. Nearly a third of states already have waiting lists.

Act by act, the verdict is clear. The Vance plan would create no new slots. It would shift a closed envelope toward married couples. Single parents are already waiting their turn.

And yet it has one quality Khanna’s bill lacks. It says where the money comes from.

Who pays in the meantime?

One plan without new money, one plan without free money.

Three pieces worth saving

Khanna’s own words

Khanna handed over the key himself. If the House will not pass the whole thing, it can take three pieces of it, he told ABC.

I take him at his word.

We can save the grants to states to open slots. Where centers are closing. We can save the pay raise for staff. Without it, no slot stays open. We can save the stay-at-home parent allowance. On one condition: that it tapers off on a slope instead of dropping all at once.

House Democratic leaders are not backing his bill, ABC reports. Lowering the cost of child care will be a priority if they win back the majority. That is all.

Khanna, for his part, wants this bill at the center of the next House speaker’s first hundred days. He says so to ABC. Even in pieces.

What to demand

One revenue source per promise. A CBO score before the vote. A slope instead of a wall.

None of that is out of reach. The CBO has already scored a program of the same family. In 2021.

The north star can wait for 2028. The November bill cannot.

A north star has never paid for day care.

One promise, one source

Five answers

First criterion, the money: already promised. Second, the bill: unstable. Third, the need: measured. Serious.

Fourth, the design: a possible cliff. Fifth, the pieces: yes. And yet that is the best news in the file.

The Free Child Care for America Act is not a bill that can be funded today. It is a platform. Right on the need. Vague on the revenue. Its author is considering a 2028 run, and says so.

He wants 2028 to be a primary of big ideas, he tells ABC. A big idea pays its bills. Otherwise, it stays a poster.

Months of bills

Before we applaud a trillion for child care, will we demand to see the revenue that is promised to no one else?

No CBO score has been announced. The November bill, for its part, will arrive on time.

An envelope folded in half, again.

Money promised twice does not pay for a single month.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• ABC News — Ro Khanna unveils the Free Child Care for America Act, September 25, 2026
• Office of Ro Khanna — Illegal War Refund Act and defense budget cut, September 17, 2026
• Office of Bernie Sanders — 5% billionaire tax and its uses, March 2, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• The Spokesman-Review (Bloomberg Opinion) — Mary Ellen Klas on the Vance and Khanna plans, September 19, 2026
• Fox News — the Vance plan at US$9,000 per child and its critics, September 11, 2026
• Child Care Aware of America — child care price and supply in 2025, May 2026