Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York assailed former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at Wednesday night’s debate, using his 1981 vote against expanding a child care tax credit to question his commitment to women’s rights.
The measure — which the Senate approved 94 to 1, with Mr. Biden as the lone dissenter — offered all families, regardless of income, a tax credit for the cost of child care. Mr. Biden, whose opposition was reported last week by HuffPost, supported the credit for low-income families but did not want to extend it to wealthy families.
Part of his objection was fiscal: He did not believe that low-income taxpayers should have to contribute to wealthy families’ child care costs. But he also argued, in forceful remarks on the Senate floor, that it was wrong for both parents to work outside the home unless it was financially necessary.
Mr. Biden, in a remark reported at the time by The Indianapolis Star and resurfaced by HuffPost, said, “I think it is a sad commentary on this society when we say, as a matter of social policy, that we should make it easier for people who have neither the financial necessity nor the personal need to forget their responsibility to take care of a child all day from the time the child is an infant until the time he or she gets in school.”
While he said he did not care which partner stayed home, the overwhelming majority of stay-at-home parents were women, even more so in 1981 than today. In practice if not in principle, his position would have kept many mothers out of the workplace.
Ms. Gillibrand has made advocating women’s rights a cornerstone of her presidential bid. The debate offered her an opportunity to emphasize that theme and breathe life into her struggling campaign, which has struggled to crack 1 percent in polls. Mr. Biden, who entered the race as a household name and continues to lead the polls, was an obvious target.
She had been expected to have something to say on the debate stage about women’s rights. Last week in Iowa, she claimed that some of her fellow Democratic candidates “do not believe necessarily that it’s a good idea that women work outside the home.” Her campaign refused to specify to whom she was referring. But on Wednesday, it became clear.