Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer could bring the Tax Relief For American Families and Workers Act for a vote this week. The House passed the $79 billion package by a 357-70 vote earlier this year.
The measure isn’t nearly as pro-family as the title suggests, conservative watchdog groups say.
More than 90 percent of the benefits come from new welfare cash payments, not tax cuts for working families, according to The Family Research Council.
“Essentially, what we’ve been involved with, what we’re interested in doing is providing a basis for which lower-income families can be given credits – incentives to work and provide credits for families for children,” Chris Gacek, the FRC’s senior fellow for regulatory affairs, said on Washington Watch Tuesday.
“On their side, everything is about converting to more welfare, increasing the reach and scope of the traditional welfare payment system, which is never what this program has been about,” Gacek said.
The bill in its current form could create government dependence rather than individual responsibility.
“his is what you’re seeing happen,” Gacek told show host Tony Perkins. “If this is allowed to go forward, you would have the opposite of the incentive structure for which all of these great programs that we were involved in going back for decades. They would be undermined.”
Will Schumer opt for ‘show’ vote?
It’s possible Schumer could call for a show vote, a parliamentary procedure where a bill is brought to the floor to score political points.
Schumer may believe such a bill could boost the campaign of Kamala Harris after recent comments from Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance.
“JD Vance has been involved in this big fight with Kamala Harris, saying the Democrat Party is not a family-friendly party. Its policies are opposed to people having children. I guess it would make sense, them kind of rolling this thing out there as a way to counter that charge … which is true,” Gacek said. “They’re a party that has a different kind of agenda.”
Democrats have problems in the family area such as reconciling their push for unrestricted taxpayer-funded abortion with what’s become known as the “birth dearth” – declining birth rates in America.
“The decline of birth rates has come along with it when you have these policies – and abortion is the most obvious – this whole sort of anti-natalist arsenal with all sorts of contraceptives, sterilization,” Gacek said.
The idea that this is tax relief is a lie, Robert Rector, the senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told Perkins.
About 75-80 percent of the bill is just writing checks to single-parent families, he said.
“It’s simply a welfare payment, and they camouflage it. It’s not intended to be tax relief,” Rector said.
Democrats’ goal here is to dismantle welfare reform from the 1990s, Rector said.
During the ’90s welfare reform strategists took the approach of, “‘Look, we are not going to deny people aid. We are not going to put people on the street, but we expect people who are able-bodied and get assistance to do something to support themselves and their families,’” Rector said. “This is about getting around that and talking about it in a completely misleading way.”
Bill has communist roots
The Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act has a communist feel about it, Rector said. It punishes married couples with “substantial” financial penalties.
“It not only subsidizes single parenthood, non-marital birth, but a family where maybe the father makes $25,000 a year and the mother makes $20,000, as long as they don’t get married and he’s off the books, she gets tens of thousands of dollars from the government. As soon as they marry, they can lose up to $20,000 a year in welfare payments,” Rector said.
Marriage, not only income, was a target of the communist system.
“Conservatives say they understand the Left and Karl Marx, that he wanted to abolish private property, and this is all about economics,” Rector said. “No, right there in the third item of the Communist Manifesto it says marriage needs to be abolished.”
