Democrats used to be the party of working people. Now, they sneer at people who work hard.
Democrats pushing to pass the Build Back Better bill want a single parent with two kids to be able to take home well over $31,000 in cash and noncash federal benefits a year, tax-free, without having to work. The handouts are even higher in states that offer generous benefits. So why get a job?
Nonworking adults are already eligible for food stamps, housing vouchers and health care. Now, Democrats want to send them monthly checks if they have kids — up to $300 per kid. The checks, nicknamed “Biden Bucks,” originated earlier this year to help tide over families who lost their jobs because of COVID. President Joe Biden’s team wants to convert them into a permanent entitlement. House Republicans mock it as “cash-for-kids.”
Everyone wants to help kids, but Republicans and one lone Democratic senator, Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, oppose handing out cash to able-bodied parents without requiring them to work or train for a job. Democrats and their media allies bash that as cruelty. Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman attacks work requirements as a “time tax and ritual humiliation” on poor people. Really? The rest of us have to work, and there’s nothing humiliating about it.
The political battle over “Biden Bucks” is key to where we as a nation are headed.
In 1996, President Bill Clinton and a bipartisan majority in Congress passed welfare reform, eliminating cash welfare without work or job preparation. It worked. Child poverty dropped from 13% to less than 4%, and teen pregnancies and welfare dependence plummeted. Democrats want to undo these reforms.
Biden himself supported the work requirement then, but he says he’s adamantly against it now. So much for his blue-collar cred.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman admits eliminating the work requirement “represents a philosophical break with the past few decades” and “the obsessive fear that poor people might take advantage of government aid by choosing not to work.”
A fear borne out by social science and common sense.
University of Chicago economists calculate that the monthly cash payments will encourage 1.5 million parents to quit working. Perhaps they’ll spend the next year on the couch, making more babies to up their income from Uncle Sam.
This week’s headlines are about Democrats trimming the Build Back Better bill to reduce the price tag and win the votes of holdouts Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Arizona. All 50 Democratic senators need to be on board to pass the bill. But don’t be misled by proposals to sunset the monthly checks after one year, or five, instead of making them permanent. That reduces the official cost. But once created, entitlements are almost never allowed to sunset. Their funding will be renewed in succeeding years.
America will fast become starkly divided between the hardworking people who foot the bills and the millions on welfare, cheering on politicians to increase the dole. The burden on working people will become intolerable.
The New York Times has been featuring opinion columns deriding Americans’ work ethic. In “8 Hours a Day, Five Days a Week Is Not Working for Us,” Bryce Covert argues that a “reduction in work doesn’t have to mean a reduction in anyone’s living standards.” That’s la-la-land economics.
When fewer people work, fewer goods are produced, and they cost more. Inflation.
Americans are shell-shocked already by rising food and fuel prices. They’re recalculating how much they can afford and how it will impact their life plans. Yet the Biden team is telling them they have to support able-bodied adults who don’t want to work. The reaction should be pure rage.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and author of “The Next Pandemic,” available at Amazon.com. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
Let’s not work anymore, Joe Biden criminal will take care of us forever.
That is literally what they are wanting!
Yet, they are tax crazy. Where do they think the money comes from to pay their endless string of taxes? Well, duh—somebody has to work and earn some money in order to do that.
But its the mindset. Democrat politicians do nothing useful nor of benefit, yet draw attractive salaries and are given cushy benefits. So, they just want to spread the love. Uh-huh.
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to EAT free.”,,the new revised inscription the Democrats of New York have planned when the Statue of Liberty gets torn down by their Democrat organized rioting mobs of socially indoctrinated entitlement derelicts now matured into full confused genderhood, and the current Statue that represents Liberty and personal responsibility gets replaced with a socialist canonized Copper colossus that looks just like a cross between bowlegged Michelle Obama and mind twisted Michael Moore in drag. These democrat Demon ideas of “Cash for Kids” is to use YOUR redistributed tax dollars to by the minds and bodies of our kids,, and use them as socially indoctrinated Tax and vote slaves that keep their crooked coffers of tax stolen money full to the brim of their Unconstitutional cups that are destined to “runneth over” in future street violence and social rebellion. “Cash for Kids” by definition and application is outright social theft by any other means, part of their game plan to flood this country with illegal alien children, destined to become their personally enriched, political puppets, and newly designed recipients of their designed social theft in the illegal redistribution of American wealth and American life force in return for votes. Those who shall not work, shall not eat, or you just end up with a nation of social thieves who use mafia run government “made men” as their arm-twisting hitmen.
I have LONG SAID OUR nation buggered up, by HAVING THAT inscription ON the statue of liberty, as it GAVE THE LEFTISTS THE IDEA TO IMPORT So many illegal invaders, and stick them all ON WELFARE…
Praise the Lord thank God! I had a Daddy who WORKED when he didn’t feel well, or enjoyed it, nor felt appreciated by his employer. Daddy had been one of eleven children, if you had blood flowing you entered the military. Daddy had a 19 year old brother killed in action. Daddy and four of his other brothers served Active Duty in the military. Daddy WORKED every day as a civilian. I can remember Daddy’s horrifying Screams in the night. Mother worked as staff at a Public School. We believed you want to be WORKING to feel as if it’s yours. To enjoy it, to appreciate that item or that money came from WORKING for it. Yes I guess that may sound OLD fashioned BUT I am so grateful I have the Memory of parents who were willing, wanted and were Happy to have the opportunity to WORK.
Democrats are trying to fix problems when they created the Great Society which destroyed the family unit creating single parent groups without a father figure in order to comply with the welfare state rules. All that has come back at them but in the form of crime and other antisocial behavior that has become acceptable to many. The people affected the most by all this will be the ones who workd but have the fruit of their labor confiscated and given to those who refuse to work.
a single parent with two kids to be able to take home well over $31,000 in cash and noncash federal benefits a year, tax-free, without having to work
Another “You don’t need a father if Mom marries the government” program.
Everyone wants to help kids
By producing another generation of fatherless children who drop out of school, join gangs, and end up in prison.
I’ve always hated folk, who AUTOMATICALLY assume “Everyone always wants to help kids”… I am fully willing for THOSE WHO WANT AND ACTUALLY NEED help. BUT not if its a ******* LIFE TIME OF HELP!
Slavery is alive and well. Want to become a slave owner? It’s easy just take taxpayer money and give it to what democrats consider the lower class and they will be yours forever.
Don’t you mean, STEAL tax payers hard earned money, and ‘give it to the welfare leeches!’
Slaves were feed ,clothed and housed. Today 13% and blm are feed ,clothed and , housed, what the difference between the two ???