By Matt Rooney
Childcare is expensive, Save Jerseyans. I know all about it from personal experience! You do, too.
Rebecca Bennett knows it. She’s talked about it. And she found a way to help cover her family’s costs while running for Congress: campaign donations.
Bennett acknowledged the arrangement during a podcast interview, explaining that using campaign money for childcare helped make campaigning full time financially possible. “That’s how we’re able to make the math work,” she said.
Her campaign reportedly spent $21,250 on childcare beginning in June 2025, according to Fox News’s review of federal filings.
That’s legal. Federal rules permit campaign funds to cover childcare expenses incurred as a direct result of campaigning.
But most New Jersey parents don’t have campaign accounts (and are far poorer than Bennett, a likely millionaire, who looked like she had eaten a bad clam when asked for her net worth at the recent NJ-07 debate). Nope! You and I have checking accounts, daycare invoices, and a recurring disagreement between the two.
Which makes Bennett’s opposition to the “One Big Beautiful Bill” worth examining. The NJ-07 Democrat attacked the legislation backed by Congressman Tom Kean Jr., particularly its healthcare provisions. That same law also expanded tax benefits for families raising children.
It increased the maximum Child Tax Credit from $2,000 to $2,200 per qualifying child. Beginning in 2026, it also increased the annual dependent-care flexible spending account limit from $5,000 to $7,500, allowing participating parents to shelter more of their own earnings from taxes to pay qualifying care expenses.
Does opposing the entire bill prove Bennett wants to eliminate every family tax benefit inside it? No. And the criticism doesn’t need that exaggeration.
She opposed legislation containing expanded family tax relief while using campaign donations to cover her own childcare. That contrast stands on its own.
Voters deserve to know which existing benefits she would preserve if given the opportunity to rewrite the Republican law. Would she keep the expanded Child Tax Credit? The higher dependent-care account limit?
Bennett has explained how she allegedly makes her family’s math work. New Jersey parents deserve an equally specific explanation of what she would do to theirs.
Hence… the NRCC’s new ad taking Bennett to task for this hypocrisy is accurate (and devastating):
📺NEW AD: Self-serving millionaire New Jersey Democrat Rebecca Bennett…
Taking away the tax cuts helping New Jerseyans pay for child care
While using campaign donations to pay for her own child care
While @RebeccaForNJ07 cashes in, we pay. WATCH: https://t.co/szwpjDZjCa
— NRCC (@NRCC) October 5, 2026
