The Experiment’s Results Are In

We’ve run an experiment, and the results are conclusive. During the pandemic, we expanded the child tax credit and changed the ways it was delivered. Understand this: We were taking the welfare payments we already gave to middle- and upper-class families each year via their tax returns, and we started giving them to poor families each month. That’s it. Welfare for those who needed it least was shared with those who needed it most.

The results were dramatic. First, this child tax credit raised more American children out of poverty at a faster rate than ever before in our country’s history. Second, while fertility rates at the beginning of the pandemic had been predicted to plummet and had started to fall, they suddenly went up. Then the Republicans (and Joe Manchin, but I repeat myself) allowed those child tax credits to expire. What happened? Between December and February of this year, four million American children fell into poverty. Fertility rates are expected to slump accordingly as well. While all this was going on, Republicans in statehouses across the nation have been working hard to restrict abortion access, and the Republicans on the Supreme Court are poised to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

So what have we learned? This all might seem very confusing if you are under the impression that Republicans have been telling the truth about what they care about. After all, if they had been trying to prevent abortions because they cared about children, they would certainly have been pleased about millions of those children having food in their bellies, right? And if Republicans, as many of us liberals suspected, only cared about fetuses until they were born, they would at least have been motivated by the increase in the number of pregnancies caused by the increase to the child tax credit. But they don’t care about fetuses. And they don’t care about kids. So what motivates the antipathy to abortion?

Some of the answer was revealed by their stated objections to the child tax credit. We were told they were worried the parents of poor children would spend the money on drugs. I can almost see why they would coke to this conclusion. After all, especially when you count alcohol as a drug, middle- and upper-class people use a lot more drugs that poor people. Also, we learned today, these very same Republican politicians who voted against extending the child tax credit have been attending cocaine-fueled orgies. I don’t particularly care which drugs adults choose to use or who they choose to have sex with, but it seems straightforward to me that these politicians made a calculation based on prohection: If we elevate more poor people into the middle- and even upper-class, they might just start acting like Republican politicians.

Despite Republican fears that the poor might get their hands on the Republican’s drugs, that didn’t happen. Know what families spent that extra money on? The data is in. They spent it on food and diapers and school supplies for their kids. Turns out, even with an extra $300, poor people couldn’t throw Republican-style cocaine orgies.

Besides the fake concern about drugs, Republicans+Manchin claimed they were worried about inflation. Only the child credits haven’t caused inflation. The pandemic hasn’t caused inflation. Supply chain issues haven’t caused inflation. Joe Biden hasn’t caused inflation. We know precisely what has caused prices to rise because the people who set the prices have told us. When surveyed, a majority of business owners admitted they have raised prices in excess of cost increases to maximize profits. Other things might have given them a pretext, bit prices are higher because the people setting prices chose to set them higher. If Republicans+Manchin were concerned about inflation, they could have spent even a tiny amount of energy addressing this price gouging. But they didn’t. Not the tinniest bit. Because that concern was a lie.

And they trotted out the national debt, something exactly none of them worried about only two years earlier when they gave enormous tax cuts to billionnaires which cost more than all the increases to the child tax credit. So that is BS, too.

So if it isn’t really about more fetuses, and it isn’t really about kids’ well-being, what is motivating Republicans at statehouses and the Supreme Court? They might tell you they have a religious objection to abortion. Fine, but if that’s the case, they are opposing abortion access on behalf of a malevolent deity who wants more children to go hungry. Four. Million. Children. In three months. Based directly on the actions of those religious zealots. I do not believe these Republicans are performing black masses and worshiping some demonic entity who wants kids to starve. So that theory of religious devotion is (pardon the pun) shot to hell. So what can it be?

By process of elimination, and by combining the results of Republican policy positions, we can see what they really want. What do both their opposition to abortion access and their opposition to the child tax credit have in common? Both are targeted at poor women (especially women of color) and seek to deny them exactly what middle- and upper-class white men currently get: welfare and drugs and the ability to make their own decisions about when to have children, what to spend their money on, and what cocaine-fueled orgies they want to attend.

The Republican Party has not changed. They’ve just been emboldened to reveal the priorities they’ve always had (much to the dismay of their think-tank conservative intellectuals who were the most duped by the party into naively believing the pretexts they sold to the public). The post-Goldwater GOP has always been about punishing the poor for not being born rich, punishing people of color for not being born white, and punishing women for not being born male. (And gay people for being gay, and they’re super-pissed at Trans people for confusing their prejudices. How can you keep attacking women if society’s definitions of gender get fuzzy? Who will you be hateful towards? You might accidentally harm someone who turns out to be a bro later, and you might provide advantages to someone who turns out to be a woman. Can’t have that in today’s Republican Party. Such a conundrum!)

Of course, these results becoming obvious won’t change any MAGA minds. They are just as dissuaded by the revelation of their hypocrisy as they are persuaded about the existence of a disease that has killed a million Americans. (Yeah, we hit that milestone. Thanks, antivaxxers. You did it.) They will continue believing their opposition to abortion access is just as righteous as their opposition to direct payments to poor families. But the rest of us should see this very clearly now. And all it took was four million hungry American children.

The next experiment on the docket: Will four million hungry American children be enough, or will we keep letting Republicans dictate public policy?