Republicans have been proclaiming for several years now that they have become the party of the working class, and with some justification. Working-class voters have indeed been marching into the party.
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Starting a couple of years ago, and increasingly since the coronavirus economic downturn, there has been a sprouting of new-wave conservative proposals designed to help working-class families, even if those plans required ditching traditional free-market economics and concerns about budget deficits.
A few examples:
— Sen. Marco Rubio, who four years ago held up the Republicans’ big tax-cut package until it included an increase in the child tax credit, now has proposed, along with Sen. Mike Lee, expanding the child tax credit to levels even more generous than the child allowance President Biden and the Democrats put in their new coronavirus stimulus law.
— Sen. Mitt Romney has proposed a guaranteed monthly government cash benefit for families, starting mid-pregnancy and extending until children are 18.
— American Compass, an organization of young, conservative economic thinkers, has proposed a similar benefit, but one tied to work by capping the benefit at the level of income earned the prior year.
Recommended Reading
Oren Cass on Fox Business’s Making Money with Charles Payne
Oren Cass joins Fox Business’s Charles Payne to discuss the Cost-of-Thriving Index and economic pressure on American families
Family Affordability Survey
American families, across parties and classes, broadly share a definition of the middle class and concern with how the economy has made middle-class life harder.
In Post-Roe World, These Conservatives Embrace a New Kind of Welfare
The New York Times features American Compass’s work leading the development of a conservative family policy.
