Republicans Betray America's Children Again

The cavalcade of Republican hypocrisy is nearly endless especially when it comes to the party's false "family values" and "pro-life" claims as we were reminded this week.  Among the reminders of how deep the hypocrisy runs, we saw the impeachment trial of GOP Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton whose mistress invoked the 5th Amendment to avoid testifying, the disclosure of GOP South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem's and Trump advisor Corey Lewandowski's years long affair (both are married to other people), and a column in the New York Times that looks at how GOP policies have driven millions of American children into poverty.   God forbid that children be exposed to the existence of LGBT people and drag queens or books that offend white supremacist sensibilities, but it is perfectly fine for children to go hungry and live in poverty - something which ultimately bears a high cost to society and in the long term costs more than the programs that the GOP has blocked.  Sadly, America is one of the few wealthy, advanced nations that views its children as disposable, especially if they are non-white.  Vast amounts are spent on the elderly or tax cuts for the super wealthy, but to Republicans in Congress (and at the state level) children get short shrift.  Here are column highlights that show that the GOP worships fetuses but cares nothing for children once they are born: 

I’ve been writing about economics and politics for many years, and have learned to keep my temper. Politicians and policymakers often make decisions that are simply cruel; they also often make decisions that are stupid, damaging the national interest for no good reason. And all too often they make decisions that are both cruel and stupid. Flying into a rage every time that happens would be exhausting.

But the latest census report on income and poverty made me angry. It showed that child poverty more than doubled between 2021 and 2022. That’s 5.1 million children pushed into misery, for it really is miserable to be poor in America.

And the thing is, this didn’t have to happen. Soaring child poverty wasn’t caused by inflation or other macroeconomic problems. It was instead a political choice. The story is in fact quite simple: Republicans and a handful of conservative Democrats blocked the extension of federal programs that had drastically reduced child poverty over the previous two years, and as a result just about all of the gains were lost.

The cruelty of this choice should be obvious. Maybe you believe (wrongly) that poor American adults are responsible for their own poverty; even if you believe that, poor children aren’t to blame. Maybe you worry that helping low-income families will reduce their incentive to work and improve their lives. Such concerns are greatly exaggerated, but even if you worry about incentive effects, are they big enough to justify keeping children poor?

Why do I say that this policy choice was stupid as well as cruel? Two reasons. First, avoiding much of this human catastrophe would have cost remarkably little money. Second, child poverty is, in the long run, very expensive for the nation as a whole: Americans who live in poverty as children grow up to become less healthy and productive adults than they should be. Even in purely fiscal terms, refusing to help poor children may, over time, actually increase budget deficits.

About the immediate budgetary costs: The thing about helping low-income Americans is that precisely because their initial incomes are so low, fairly modest amounts of aid can make a huge difference to their well-being.

More than half of the rise in child poverty could have been avoided by extending the 2021 enhancement of the child tax credit. Such an extension would probably have had a direct budget cost of about $105 billion a year.

[I]t’s actually a modest sum. It’s less than half a percent of the country’s gross domestic product. It’s a small fraction of what we spend on Social Security ($1.3 trillion) and Medicare ($800 billion). It’s only a bit more than half the annual revenue loss from the 2017 Trump tax cut.

Furthermore, we could have significantly blunted the rise in child poverty by retaining just one piece of the child tax credit enhancement, the part that made the credit fully refundable — that is, allowed the lowest-income households to get the entire $2,000 credit. The estimated cost of doing this would be around only $12 billion a year — pocket change in the context of the federal budget.

But we didn’t do any of these things, again, because of conservative opposition. And the nation as a whole will pay a steep price.

The proposition that helping poor children makes them healthier, more productive adults isn’t hypothetical. On the contrary, it’s backed by solid evidence — better than the evidence that spending on physical infrastructure is good for the economy (although I believe that too) and infinitely better than the evidence that tax cuts promote growth, which is nonexistent.

How so? Historically, anti-poverty programs like food stamps and Medicaid weren’t introduced uniformly across America. Instead, they were rolled out gradually across regions, so we can compare the life trajectories of Americans who had access to these programs as children with those of Americans who didn’t. The results are clear: Aid to low-income children is a “highly cost-effective investment.” Those who received such aid ended up healthier, better educated and more economically self-sufficient than those who didn’t.

Since adults who aren’t productive or healthy are, among other things, a fiscal burden, this may well mean that even in purely budgetary terms cutting off aid to poor children is self-destructive. Yet here we are.

Unfortunately, children can’t vote and poor adults tend not to vote either. So politicians can get away with policies that harm poor children.

Realistically, the political will to undo our terrible mistake doesn’t exist at the moment. But there’s always hope that we’ll eventually do the right thing.