(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Feed the Children. [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-09-29 Love Walter’s work and loved his brief article about Kathryn Anne Edwards owning John Kennedy. Always nice to see Kennedy get some and Edwards just lays it out there. But something has been bothering me for the past 4 days and I finally figured out what. For context here is Walter’s introductory paragraph. The topic is child care and Kennedy is, as usual, a buffoon. A Senate subcommittee hearing on post-pandemic child care was held last week, featuring experts who detailed how little is being done to protect children from hunger, poverty, crime, poor health outcomes, and death. Edwards advocates for a return of the expanded child tax credit which was solely responsible for cutting child poverty in half. Now that’s it’s expired child poverty has doubled. It’s up to 12.5% now. And not to put to fine a point on it but children don’t have money anyway, because they’re children. So a child living in poverty means they also don’t have food. Kennedy disingenuously asks Edwards however would we pay for it? Edwards doesn’t skirt the issue and just says raise taxes. But the great thing about it is she goes back 22 years and points out that the tax cuts passed 22 years ago were supposed to fix this. The 2001 tax cuts cut taxes for everyone who pays taxes and included doubling the child tax credit, to $1000, over 10 years. Sounds good except poor people don’t pay taxes and don’t get the credit. The 2001 tax cuts did not help the most vulnerable precisely because they are the most vulnerable. The expanded child tax credits of 2021-2023 did actually help the folks who needed/need it most because it was paid out regardless of tax status. People who owed no taxes still got a check and that helped feed actual kids in poverty. Edwards pointed out that the 2001 tax cuts didn’t do anything about child poverty and 2 more tax cuts since then also failed to help. Other’s have frequently pointed out that trickle down economics doesn’t work yet the Republicans continue to use it to justify more tax cuts. Edwards focuses on child poverty and points out the same pattern. You’ve had 22 years to show that cutting taxes helps Americans, she says, and it hasn’t worked. Try the other thing. Raise taxes, invest in children, give it 22 years, then meet back here and we’ll talk again. Study after study after study has shown if you invest in people, and especially children, your return on investment is enormous. As high as 5 to 1, I’ve seen. So that’s a brilliant response and I love it and we should definitely do that, and yet … Kennedy didn’t seem particularly owned. He shrugged and condescendingly said ”Well, let me say thank you for the honest answer—raise taxes.” and that was that. It seemed he thought raising taxes was just such an absurd notion and … moving on … I was outraged. Obviously. It’s been bothering me for 4 days and this is why. The answer to the question “However shall we pay for this?” is not “Raise taxes.” The answer to the question ”However shall we pay for this?” is “Why the HELL is that even a question!” How do we not pay for this? We are talking about feeding children! Right? You claim to be pro-life yet you want to quibble about a few bucks to feed children? How dare you you snotty little piece of …. That should be the first line in your budget. #1 Feed the children! The second line item is shelter the children. The third line item is clothe the children. The fourth line item is educate the children. The fifth line item is make sure the children are healthy. The sixth line item is build some playgrounds. And somewhere down around item 17 you have a non-child related item and everything else is in the “However shall we pay for this?” category. There. I feel better. How’re you? [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/29/2196327/-Feed-the-Children Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/