Manchin refuses to support Biden’s “Build Back Better” social program partly because he thinks mothers would use child tax credit payments for drugs.
When a volunteer with the American Friends Service Committee (a Quaker group) who “attended a meeting with about a dozen other advocates at Manchin’s Charleston office in September [and] they pressed the senator to support the child tax credit, ‘He said he’s gotten phone calls from one grandmother specifically talking about her crackhead daughter ― he used the word crackhead three times ― talking about her crackhead daughter running around using the child tax credit to buy drugs and get high instead of it going where it needs to go,’” she told Huffington Post (read story here).
One West Virginia grandma with a “crackhead daughter” determines child care policy for the entire nation? Apparently so.
Forgive me for wondering if everybody in West Virginia, including their senator, is on drugs. (I’ve never been there, so I wouldn’t know; I’m merely asking. That state has something of a reputation.)
But let’s be clear about something: Manchin wouldn’t matter if even one Republican senator voted for the bill. The problem isn’t Manchin, it’s Manchin plus 50 Republicans.
The child tax credit will expire in a few days. There’s nothing to replace it. That will keep hundreds of thousands of women who can’t afford child care out of the workforce. Republicans can’t vote against this and then credibly complain that employers can’t hire workers.
Last summer, when they cut off unemployment benefits, they insisted that was necessary to get “lazy” workers to return to work. It had a negligible effect. They tried forced schools to reopen prematurely, not for the kids’ sake, but so their parents could work, because employers are clamoring for workers. That had no effect on the labor shortage, either. So far, they’re batting 0-for-2, and they’re wrong this time, too.
Every reputable economist says child care is a major factor in the low labor participation rate. That’s actually common knowledge. (For example, a Huffington Post article here says, “Lack of child care has resulted in a ‘she-cession’ with thousands of women leaving the workforce to take care of their children.” What are these mothers supposed to do?) If you want people to work, you have to make it possible for them to work.
Manchin’s excuse for opposing the child care provisions of “Build Back Better” isn’t just stupid, it’s insulting. He’s insinuating that every working mother in the country is doing drugs and can’t be trusted with money for child care. You can’t reason with this; it’s not reasonable. You have to go around it. And it would take only one Republican vote to do that.
Manchin killed child care, but Republicans had 50 opportunities to save it, and refused. This is as much their fault as his.