McCaughey: Every Time You Pass One of These Signs, Thank Manchin
The Democratic Party used to call itself the party of working people and hail the “dignity of work.” No more.
Now Democrats want to guarantee people who choose not to work an income funded by the suckers who do the right thing by showing up for work, caring for their family and paying taxes.
Fortunately, these self-supporting Americans just dodged a bullet. The failure to pass Build Back Better in Congress, thanks to holdout Sen. Joe Manchin, means that the monthly checks or automatic bank deposits to parents with kids, sometimes dubbed “Biden Bucks,” come to an end this month.
For working people, the monthly payments were merely an advance on their tax refunds — but parents who choose not to work have been getting no-strings money to support their non-working lifestyle.
Using the pretext of pandemic relief, Democrats enacting the American Rescue Plan last March changed a feature of the tax code — the child tax credit available to adults who work and pay taxes — into a grant paid unconditionally and monthly to almost all adults with kids, whether they work or not.
Democrats have been pushing to extend the monthly payments through 2022 as part of the Build Back Better Act, with a plan to make them permanent.
Manchin saw what his party intended — a socialist-style universal basic income — and objected to the unconditional monthly cash grants: “There’s no work requirements whatsoever.”
“Don’t you think if we’re going to help the children,” Manchin asked, the parents should “make some effort?”
So what about the Democratic Party that represents working people? President Joe Biden still talks the talk: “My Dad used to say, ‘Joey, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity. It’s about respect. It’s about your place in the community.'”
But Biden’s party is no longer walking the walk. As Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore of Wisconsin told the House Ways and Means Committee during a debate over Build Back Better, “the so-called dignity of work — that’s like hearing a fingernail on a chalkboard.” New York Magazine’s Eric Levitz called Manchin’s work ethic convictions “contemptible.”
Sorry, but most Americans don’t want to support the moochers.
Proponents of the monthly payments hail them as “already a huge success” for lifting millions of children out of poverty. Nonsense. That’s what a working parent does. The national poverty rate fell temporarily, but the payments didn’t solve the problem of parents without the proper mindset to support their children.
This is déjà vu. Before the 1996 welfare reform enacted by a Republican Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton, Uncle Sam used to send checks to non-working parents.
Welfare reform changed that, requiring parents to work or train for work in order to receive cash benefits. It succeeded, reducing the welfare rolls, ameliorating child poverty and helping single mothers become self-sufficient.
Yet today’s Democratic Party spurns that model. Democrats tend to blame unemployment on racism or a rigged economy and argue that people deserve dignity, whether they choose to work or not.
Of course, all human beings deserve dignity — but not a seat on the couch in front of the TV funded by people who work.
Democratic politicians all over the nation are pushing to provide a monthly basic income to the non-working poor, courtesy of taxpayers. They’ve formed Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. Los Angeles is sending out monthly $1,000 checks to 3,000 residents. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is using millions in federal pandemic relief funding to distribute $500 cash stipends to randomly chosen low-income recipients every month.
That ought to enrage anyone who works and pays taxes.
Jobs are plentiful. The National Federation of Independent Businesses reported that half of small business owners cannot fill positions. Businesses are posting “Help Wanted” signs in windows.
Every time you pass one of those signs, you can thank Manchin for holding the line against turning taxpayers into suckers supporting the freeloaders.
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