Fox News, (I think I’m going to have to start putting the word “news” in scare quotes when preceded by “Fox”), was the first to selectively tell the story in “shock”. A few days back the child poverty rate for 2022 was publicly reported. In 2021 it was a historic low of 5.2%, in 2022 it skyrocketed to 12.4%. The right wing media immediately and dramatically implied that Joe Biden was the cause. Sarcastically I’ll say, “Not exactly!”

The reality is that the Republicans are to blame for the massive increase. In 2021 American families basically received $300 per month per child from the federal government. The Republican never supported the program to start with and ended up letting it sunset. That is the major difference between the two years. The results we see today are the proof that it worked. Reinstating it would be a good moral and business decision and New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker is championing exactly that in Congress.

I’m sure the right wing will come up with some antidotes about someone who took the funds and bought drugs instead of feeding their kids. That was obviously not the case in the overwhelming number of cases as proven by the numbers.

Forget the moral arguments – today’s GOP is largely amoral so they don’t work with them– the child tax credit expansion is a good business investment that will return in kind plus “interest” in the future. When viewed as a part of the federal budget it is actually a rather modest investment. Don’t take my word alone on those two points. Read Nobel Laureate, Dr. Paul Krugman’s, New York Times opinion piece of September 14, 2023 entitled, America Betrays Its Children Again.

Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t feeding your family a basic family value?

There are people at fault and subject to blame but Joe Biden isn’t among them!

The right wing mythology chatter seems to have ebbed on this front. (I think it will prove to be a zombie.) This time rapid response appears to have worked. I go back to my illustration of the problem: you can tell a lot of lies in 30 seconds; a lot more than you can refute in that same time period. I cite 30 seconds for two reasons: that is about the political attention span of most voters and the length of most political commercials.

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