Praise for family allowances from Christopher Buskirk, a conservative in The NY Times:
The formula is simple or at least ought to be: Americans should be able to support a family of four, own a home and send their kids to school on a single median wage.
The same paper had a related article today about the huge benefits the stimulus will give to working parents.
The plan establishes the benefit for a single year. But if it becomes permanent, as Democrats intend, it will greatly enlarge the safety net for the poor and the middle class at a time when the volatile modern economy often leaves families moving between those groups. More than 93 percent of children — 69 million — would receive benefits under the plan, at a one-year cost of more than $100 billion.
I hope it can be made permanent, maybe along the more generous lines of the surprisingly progressive Romney plan which also eliminates the onerous work requirements of the TANF program* and the upper middle class SALT deduction tax subsidy*.
As Buskirk mentions, this is a program that will use liberal means, mainly income redistribution, to achieve conservative ends, mainly family stabilization. This is not only good policy, but good politics.
The rising cost of childcare, housing, healthcare, food, and education has led to my generation delaying childbirth. I’m 32, and when I was 22 I fully expected to be a homeowner and father by now. My generation graduated right into the Great Recession and has born the brunt of Covid related job losses and income insecurity. The black single mother interviewed in the second article was an independent non-voter who skipped the presidential election, but voted for both her Democratic senators in the Georgian special election since she wanted her stimulus checks. Buskirk is correct that the party which owns this issue will be the one to win future elections as the great middle class continues to be hallowed out and the Millennial vote becomes the largest share of the electorate.
These private conversations have been instructive. One conservative friend in her late 20s, upon hearing about the Biden plan, told me, “What the heck, I guess I’m a Democrat now.” She was joking about switching parties, but not about her support for the child allowance. Other young Republicans might go the additional step, which would spell doom for Republicans who are already struggling with younger people.
This policy is a win-win for both parties and its even smarter politics for the Democrats. They should hammer out a compromise with Romney and own this issue.
*Romney’s modifications to TANF benefits and SNAP benefits are regressive and hopefully can be hammered away in a compromise to get to 60 votes
*Maintaining the SALT deduction is regressive at present but will probably need to be dropped to get to 60 votes and win the support of NY/NJ representatives in either party
Yes, yes, yes. When I was a conservative, this was one issue I pushed as well. (I was a 20+ year subscriber to National Review and cancelled my subscription the moment they fired Christopher Buckley for being critical of Sarah Palin.)
I would hope that Senator Elizabeth Warren author of The Two Income-Trap (with her daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi) would join Senator Romney on legislation to support this.
In my humble opinion, we place far too much importance on careers, the job, and all that it takes to get the best career, the best job while ignoring the benefits of raising ones own family and not being tied to some occupation outside of that.
It is the neoliberal dream of turning us all into our own individual micro-enterprises, what Peter Fleming refers to as the “I, Job” function in his book “The Mythology of Work”.
No, one does not need to have a career or a job at some facility outside of ones home in order to have an identity. But you would never know that listening to politicians that we need more jobs and we need affordable daycare so that more parents can get more jobs.
An interesting discovery during the pandemic was that many people were able to work from home, and be every bit as productive. One catch, however, is that without the constant supervision by “the boss”, many people were just as productive but were able to get the job done in a shorter period. The question then becomes “What do we do with this extra time”? In a fair world, the extra time would go to the worker. After all be or she did the same amount of work as was done in the office, but now instead of 40 hours in the office, the work is getting done in 35 hours at home. As it turns out, the “I Job” mentality means the extra time goes to the job, without any extra pay for the worker.
You might ask, “How would the Boss know how long anyone was working from home?” Of course, they could track the time the employee was logged onto the company portal, but they could be logged in an watching a movie, same with answering a phone call.
This is how : Movement-tracking software like Microsoft Lync / Teams. When you leave your desk, your computer starts to count down the seconds. After a few minutes, the Microsoft app alerts your boss that you are not working. We don’t care that you have met your sales goals, edited the day’s submission of documents, calculated the numbers on all the spread sheets we sent you……YOU NEED TO WORK. Family life does not matter.
Interestingly enough someone came up with this: The Liberty Mouse Mover simulates mouse motion…take back your freedom!
This absolute and undeniable truth is the primary motivator for the white supremacist movement that has taken over the GOP — and threatens to end representative democracy in America.
This diary and the argument it makes describes how to move forward in the context of a society that acknowledges the humanity of non-white Americans.
A large majority of the electorate that today identifies with the GOP takes a much darker approach — they embrace and encourage increasingly extremist hoaxes, lies, and hysteria driven by a desire to oppress and silence non-whites.
This is the sinister and cynical center of the GOP leadership that clings to and puts forward Donald Trump and his thugs.
I enthusiastically agree with this diary and its proposals.
I wonder what happens if the white supremacist majority of today’s GOP expands to become the white supremacist minority that controls American government.
It’s also undeniable though that Trump did better with Latinos and Blake people this time around then he did four years ago. Florida seems much less likely to go blue than Texas since younger Latinos there are actually more conservative than their parents. He also won the Vietnamese parts of Dorchester and Chicago. I am not justifying these votes as I totally agree my own mixed race unionized family will be much better off under Democrats for a host of reasons, but I wonder how much those fat checks with Trumps name on it played a roll.
Personally I find my immigrant students to be more economically conservative than I am, even on stuff like raising the minimum wage. I think the GOP is at a crossroads and if it doubles down on xenophobia and white grievance it will be doomed to be a minority party. Even with voter suppression and all the procedural handicaps in its favor (electoral college, senate disproportionately, a too small gerrymandered house, etc.) they still lost to a Democratic coalition that shedded some voters.
Or they could become an inclusive opportunity party focused on preserving the free market economy and home and business ownership while expanding the safety net. I think they could win over the Latinos and Muslims in Revere who’s families own local businesses and franchises and feel squeezed by the right on immigration and by the left on taxation and regulation. Squeezed on failure to properly respond to Covid and the lockdown economy.
I have a feeling they inevitably double down since their base is hungry to avenge a “stolen election”, I could see someone like Nikki Haley or Tim Scott being viable in 2028 running on the Romney plan or some right wing variation of Andrew Yangs basic income.
Maybe I read too fast, but is this basically a form of UBI?
It’s a conditional basic income rather than a universal one. A true UBI would go to every citizen, this one just goes to citizens with children.
Do I recall correctly that this was first proposed years ago?
I think I recall that the Earned Income Tax Credit was offered by the GOP as an alternative to this. The objection to the EITC at the time remains valid — it is available only to those who have income to tax.
I may be thinking of the first UBI proposals, though.
Moynihan and Nixon came awfully close. It was attacked as too generous by the right and not generous enough by the left, but it would have given families the equivalent of an extra $11,000 a year in additional income.
Once again, Nixon the liberal.
Strictly on the domestic economy he was to the left of any Democratic president until Biden, who if the stimulus passes, will be the most economically progressive president since LBJ. This new bill is the most radical expansion of the welfare state since Medicare. It would be great if Romney continued the Ike-Nixon legacy of innovating rather than restricting or abolishing the welfare state.
Funny thing is, nobody thinks of Biden as being very left.
I was unsurprised by his advocacy of Amazon getting a union, he was also more pro-union than Obama and I suspect more populist overall about other issues. I am genuinely surprised by the back door public option, the EITC expansion as a direct credit, and a lot of other policies I’m surprised they are not highlighting. Hopefully they can be made permanent. Their strategy is a really interesting one.
Like Hillary, I’ve always thought it was a closet economic progressive. It’s on foreign policy where their centrism really shows, for better in some cases and for worse in others.
President Nixon – 1972 -in a letter to the Congress of the United States wrote:
An all-directions reform of our health care system–so that every citizen will be able to get quality health care at reasonable cost regardless of income and regardless of area of residence–remains an item of highest priority on my unfinished agenda for America in the 1970s.
In the ultimate sense, the general good health of our people is the foundation of our national strength, as well as being the truest wealth that individuals can possess.
Nothing should impede us from doing whatever is necessary to bring the best possible health care to those who do not now have it–while improving health care quality for everyone–at the earliest possible time.
In 1971, I submitted to the Congress my new National Health Strategy which would produce the kind of health care Americans desire and deserve, at costs we all can afford.
THE NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE
PARTNERSHIP ACT
1. The National Health Insurance Standards Act would require employers to provide adequate health insurance for their employees, who would share in underwriting its costs. This approach follows precedents of long-standing under which personal security–and thus national economic progress–has been enhanced by requiring employers to provide minimum wages and disability and retirement benefits and to observe occupational health and safety standards.
Such a tragedy Watergate was! I’m convinced Nixon did not need to engage in such shenanigans to win in 1972. Then he could have served out his term and we could have made some progress.
Nothing ever came of Mr. Nixon’s failed 1972 proposal. It’s hard to find now without serious historical research, but my distinct impression is that political figures of the day viewed it primarily as a media ploy to distract media attention from other matters — the worsening situation in Vietnam in particular (such as the secret and arguably illegal bombing of Cambodia since 1969).
The Pentagon Papers had been published in 1971, and were having a devastating effect on the credibility of Mr. Nixon’s administration in particular and American government in general.
Please do not speak so wistfully about Richard Nixon. He was a villain. The “shenanigans” of Richard Nixon were much larger than Watergate. As you correctly observe, Mr. Nixon did not need any of that to win re-election in 1972. Whatever purposes the Watergate break-in and subsequent coverup served were much larger than winning the 1972 election.
What we do know is that Mr. Nixon and his co-conspirators were involved in a multitude of secret, unsavory, and self-serving activities covering a wide range of subjects. We also know that each and every key disclosure of the Watergate scandal came from active or retired CIA operatives.
Whatever the motivation, it is very unlikely that those disciplined intelligence professionals would sing like canaries without direct guidance from CIA officials.
Richard Nixon was a much darker force than you tend to acknowledge. We will never know the full extent of what was really happening because it was so successfully buried by the Gerald Ford pardons.
Maybe it’s a generational difference of living through it vs. merely being part of history, but you have always seemed to have viscerally hated Nixon more than I have. IIRC correctly he gave us OSHA and the EPA, and could have made more progress on health care. Were it not for his immense tragic flaws his legacy could have been much better.
Experience is far and away the best teacher.
No book, documentary, course, or seminar can equal lived experience.
You will learn this yourself a few decades from now when earnest and well-intentioned 8th graders tell you that Donald Trump “wasn’t so bad after all.”
AMERICA was far more liberal in 1972 than it is today. Spiro Agnew won his first gubernatorial contest in MD by positioning himself as a liberal against the Democratic nominee — George E. Mahoney in the 1966 campaign for Governor. Mr. Mahoney’s campaign slogan was “Your home is your castle” — he ran against a recently-enacted MD open housing law.
I would be remiss by not also mentioning that the reason why Gerald Ford took office upon the resignation of Richard Nixon is that Spiro Agnew had been forced to resign as Vice President because he was about to be correctly convicted for his role in a pervasive kickback-and-graft scheme that he masterminded in MD while governor. Mr. Agnew arranged for the largest asphalt contractor in the state to do unnecessary repairs throughout the state in exchange for lucrative state highway contracts while collecting a share of those contracts in kickbacks. Many insiders said that Mr. Nixon was very much aware of this exposure and chose Mr. Agnew because of his resulting willingness to do whatever Mr. Nixon asked.
There was nothing “liberal” about Spiro Agnew or Richard Nixon. They each, like today’s Lindsay Graham, did and said whatever was politically expedient to gain office and power.
It is a mistake to measure corrupt villains from our past by the standards of our present.
I don’t disagree with that. We were more liberal then and at least from the perspective of the working class, we were better off. I posted his stand on health care to illustrate how far to the right we have drifted, ever so slowly each year since. If only we could convince or fellow Democrats that today’s “moderate” Democrat is a Republican who is not racist but on economic issues, no different from the Reagan Republicans.
I hope more Democrats grow a spine, take a stand, and ignore their fears of the “moderates’ and independents.
As someone pointed out on MSNBC last night, look at Sherrod Brown who won in Ohio, a state that Trump won twice. (and an honorable mention to our own Jim McGovern who is not afraid to be a liberal in the towns of central Massachusetts)
Brown knows to focus on the issues his voters care about which is why he fought to rescue obscure pensions even the ‘liberals’ at the Times would have refused to bailout. But those hundreds of thousands of workers had nothing to do with their pension’s mismanagement and making sure they got their fair share of contributions back is a huge bread and butter issue. He was my first choice for 2020, but I’m glad he stayed put since we wouldn’t have a majority without him. Manchin gets the attention, but Brown is also a Trump State Democrat to the left of some in our blue state delegation. Also Tim Ryan has been fantastic on the ARP and I hope he can become the next junior senator to work with Brown.
“Reagan Republicans” were radically different from “Nixon Republicans”. See my comment below…
Both parties were to the left of their contemporaries on economic issues then, although the spirit of the Humphrey-Hawley act has finally been channeled in today’s Rescue Plan and Janet Yellen and more surprisingly Jerome Powell. Nixon said “we’re all Keynesians” now while Clinton and Obama basically conceded we were all Reaganites now in their approach to economic issues. Obviously they were more progressive than the Reaganite framework they inherited, but they worked within it rather than trying to change it. The “centrist” Biden has done more to change it in two months than any previous president in my thirty two years. On economic and racial issues he’s been fantastic.
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — even more so — were forced to accept the radical change that the extreme right made to the electorate between the landslide loss of Barry Goldwater in 1964 and the landslide victory of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
When Richard Nixon said “we’re all Keynesians now”, he was acknowledging the objective correctness of Keynesian economic theory. The denial of that correctness by Ronald “Voodoo Economics” Reagan and the entire GOP since then is the same as their denial of climate science in more recent years or medical science today. Paul Krugman has been documenting this for YEARS.
Neither Bill Clinton nor Barack Obama was able to reverse the willful ignorance and self-serving denial of an American electorate being manipulated by the knowing and intentional lies of the GOP. That willful ignorance and self-serving denial has been compounded by Fox News — a media outlet created by Reagan extremists who believed that CNN was “too liberal”.
The current collapse of the American political system has its roots in the pandering, lies, and deceit of the extreme right during their successful campaign to impose their racist, misogynist, and xenophobic views on mainstream America.
We may or may not get through the civil war that is currently being waged in America. To the extent that forces of civilization prevail against the dark forces that the Trumpists embody, it will be because Mr. Biden was the person in the Oval Office — not as a result of leadership on his part.
We should not blame Mr. Reagan, Mr. Clinton or Mr. Obama for the decline that happened on their respective watches nor should we give undue credit to Mr. Biden if we overcome this crisis on his.
We are seeing MUCH larger demographic forces at play, forces that originate in our culture, history, and demographics. Those are much larger than any individual man or woman and play out over much longer time spans.
An enormous share of the racism — both individual and systemic — that we see today is the consequences of America’s original sin of Slavery.
Pretty much any fair reading of history suggests that even THAT original sin was not limited to slavery — America was, after all, continuing a centuries-long genocide against Native Indians while fighting our Civil War.
White Americans have never in our 300 year history willingly stopped plundering non-whites for wealth, power, and control. If we are collectively able to stop today’s Trumpists from destroying representative democracy in America in order to suppress the demographic tide that has already turned, then THAT will be a truly historic achievement.
I hope and pray that we are able to succeed at this. If we do, it will be MUCH larger than any individual man, women, or party.
Appreciate these insights and I largely agree with this analysis.
I didn’t realize Agnew seemed more liberal. I always thought he was the true right-winger of the ticket and played his attack dog of the left role well.
Perhaps I was unclear. Spiro Agnew WAS the true right-winger of the ticket. He was just as racist as his Democratic gubernatorial opponent — and more far more duplicitous.
Richard Nixon was no more liberal than Mr. Agnew. Whatever “liberal” positions Mr. Nixon appeared to support or advance were driven brazen political expediency.
Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew were corrupt, vicious, and cynical manipulators who had no absolutely no scruples about lying.