Do it for the children (and the votes)

A special day, a clear agenda, and a bit of relief

Sep 23, 2023

Welcome to a Friday evening edition of Progress Report.

It’s hard for me to believe, but today was Shea’s first birthday. So far, so good: He is preternaturally sweet and cheerful while also uncompromisingly independent, relentlessly curious, and hyper-determined to explore every inch of the world around him. Only some of those traits can be traced back to me; I’ll let you guess which.

As for the milestones that everyone seems genuinely excited to ask about: Shea loves to stand up, even if he hasn’t quite begun to walk, and he is extremely chatty, even if he doesn’t really talk. At the moment, it’s more babbling accented by two real words: “up” or “uh oh,” the latter of which is reserved for when he pretends to be shocked after purposely dropping food on the floor.

I’m not just cataloging the details of his development out of pride or self-indulgence; I’ll save that for Instagram. Instead, it’s a convenient entry point into one of our main stories tonight, about the economics of having children. The financial cost of parenthood is in the midst of another significant shift, in part due to several charged federal and state policies that are in urgent need of addressing.

We’ll talk about those tonight — don’t worry, it’s not just a bunch of bad news! — as well as catch you up on a number of other major (and some very weird) news stories.

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No matter where you are in the United States, childcare has never been more expensive, more in demand, or less lucrative for the workers who perform miracles every single day. And it’s likely only going to get worse, at least in the short term.

The $39 billion in childcare subsidies that Congress included in the American Rescue Plan will expire on September 30th. A full 80% of childcare businesses received some money from that massive fund, and once the tap is off, an industry that is down 40,000 workers may lose up to another 230,000, even if it raises prices. What’s astounding is that nobody is really making money on this industry, except for maybe the landlords that house daycare centers.

It’s not just childcare; parents and their kids have in many ways been abandoned by the government in recent years, and the fall has felt particularly long and hard after the all-too-brief era of stimulus-driven social safety net. It’s a substantial contributor to the broad pessimism on the economy at the moment, I think, because it’s meant less money being deposited into people’s accounts as more money flows out.

The most signifiant and tangible downshift in federal aid happened after the expiration of the additional child tax credit. The tax credit cut the American children poverty rate in half over the course of 2021 and 2022, a massive achievement that has been entirely erased over the past 12 months. I’ll touch on that in a moment, but first, some good news to report from what I’ve taken to calling the GOP War on Children.

After watching dozens of states purge millions of low-income Americans from the Medicaid rolls, the Division of Health and Human Services finally took some action this week when it ordered 29 states and DC to pause their unwinding processes and restore coverage to people who’d been removed due to a giant computer glitch.

There are around 500,000 people total who lost their coverage due to the glitch, which evaluated enrollees by family instead of by individual. Because states are generally more generous when it comes to covering children, the glitch disproportionately booted kids from their health insurance.

At 500,000 re-enrolled, it’s significant revision yet still only a small portion of the 7.4 million people that have been purged thus far. A vast majority of those have been victims of “procedural errors,” which is to say that they were unaware of their risk or didn’t properly fill out some confusing paperwork.

The problem has been particularly pronounced in the South, where states that have not expanded Medicaid have much lower income thresholds for disqualification. In speaking with activists on the ground, they’re asking the federal government to put a longer pause on the disenrollment paired with a requirement that state governments try again to contact people purged for paperwork problems. They also need more health care navigators available, especially in rural areas, to help purge victims reapply for Medicaid or navigate the federal marketplace.

Both should be no-brainers for the White House, which would be well-served by very publicly requesting more money from Congress to hire those navigators and urging states such as Texas and Florida to expand Medicaid. House Republicans would likely refuse to even consider the funding request — they can’t even get a defense spending bill passed through their blood-thirsty lunatic caucus — but that’s no reason not to float the idea.

Politically, their guaranteed opposition makes it even more worth proposing, because it will help draw distinctions with Republicans after two years of almost zero legislative accomplishments. It’s a strategy that Democrat should pursue on one popular domestic policy after another, including re-expanding the child tax credit and the various components of Build Back Better that were nixed by Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

President Biden wants to run on his accomplishments, especially the revival of American industrial policy, but pouring trillions of dollars into long-term projects by definition cannot produce the sort of immediate and direct impact on voters’ lives that shapes their perceptions of the economy. Instead, Biden and Democrats would be best served running on the promise of finishing the job on policies such as universal childcare and Pre-K, free community college, and paid leave.

There’s no reason for Democrats to fear reminding voters that they fell short the first time; in fact, they should tout how close they came to truly expanding the social contract and delivering unprecedented (in this country) help for working and middle-class families. Running to the center-right and jettisoning those policies offers zero upside, even for supposedly savvy political operators like Joe Manchin.

Here’s a headline from a local West Virginia newspaper from just a day ago:

Manchin is going to get blown out of the water next year, as is Kyrsten Sinema, if she even winds up running. The Democrats that survive will be the ones that work to deliver transformative policies, no matter how much the media tries to suggest otherwise.

Education

Florida: Ron DeSantis’s Department of Education ascended to a higher plane of stupidity on Friday evening when it accused four private schools of having “direct ties” to the Chinese Communist Party and booted them from the state’s new universal voucher program.

The schools, each of which have been operating for decades without issue, are considered some of the best in Central and South Florida. They’re all owned by Spring Education Group, a network of 230 private schools that are owned by Primavera Holdings Limited, a private investment firm based in Hong Kong.

The state’s new voucher expansion law prohibits tax dollars being sent to schools that are owned by a “foreign country of concern,” but there’s no evidence that the Chinese government owns Primavera. That’s because the private equity fund was founded by Goldman Sachs alum, is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, has massive institutional investors such as MetLife and Pennsylvania State Employees' Retirement System.

Now, the students at those schools who received tuition vouchers from the state will have to either produce the money themselves or find new schools right at the beginning of the school year.

This is a new wrinkle to the giant reactionary school voucher scam. Politicians like DeSantis can funnel tens of millions of dollars to ideologically aligned schools run by donors while making a show of throttling schools for nothing more than a simple political gambit to revive a badly failing presidential campaign.

Michigan: On a much nicer note, Michigan Democrats are exploring ways to extend the state’s new universal free school lunch program into a permanent service for kids in grades K-12.

One year of free universal school lunch was included in this year’s budget, reviving one of the pandemic stimulus bills’ most popular offerings through June. Neighboring Minnesota was able to make it permanent, so the pressure is on to keep up.

Corruption

More Supreme Court humiliation: Another day, another ProPublica scoop revealing previously unreported and deeply egregious ethics violations committed by the tirelessly corrupt Clarence Thomas.

Once again, it appears that the radical reactionary justice spent some of his prodigious free time enjoying the hospitality of a far-right billionaire activist who just so happens to frequently have direct interests in cases being argued before the Supreme Court. This time, Thomas was revealed to have attended at least two of Charles Koch’s annual donor summits, which are always attended by a who’s who of instatiably greedy cranks and the twisted ideologues who do their bidding.

Thomas wasn’t just a guest — he offered himself up as a selling point to rich conservatives considering future donations to the Kochs’ various tax shelters and shadow government organizations. He has also been a regular guest at a camp set up by the Kochs and Harlan Crow at Bohemian Grove, a secretive retreat for old horny losers with unfathomably large bank accounts and increasingly little grip on reality.

What is there to say at this point? If you’re Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, the answer is nothing at all. Durbin, the one person with both the subpoena power and forum to investigate Clarence Thomas and the far-right cabal that has hijacked the Supreme Court, went radio silent after the news broke, not even bothering to feign concern.

He did, however, find the time and gumption to speak out in condemnation of the new Senate dress code and John Fetterman’s wardrobe. Dick Durbin is far more concerned with preserving old institutions than protecting the future of American democracy.

Finally: Growing up in New Jersey, I didn’t pay much attention to politics until high school. Yet even back then, long before he was indicted the first time, I somehow knew that Robert Menendez was corrupt as hell. It was a fact of life, knowledge that you absorbed through the ether, like the lyrics of a Springsteen song. I just can’t believe that Menendez actually got caught and indicted; by the looks of it, he just got comfortable and sloppy.

Menendez is acting defiant now, but it’s hard to imagine Senate Democrats standing by him once again as more details are made public, if for no other reason that it makes it harder to run against Trump’s criminality.

The real question to me is whether his son, who was essentially gifted a House seat, gets territorial about what he considers his birthright and decided to run for Senate down the line. If the party line is still as strong as it is now, he’d probably be a front-runner.

Housing

Connecticut: Three cities in the Nutmeg State are launching land banks to expedite the interminably long process required for the local government to acquire land and property and build affordable housing. Here’s how it’d change things:

Right now, the city has to go through a long process to purchase properties. It starts out like any other potential sale, with an offer and a negotiation. Then, it’s presented to the Board of Alders. The BOA then sends it to the committee, and the committee reviews it and decides whether to move forward with it.
At this time, since it’s a public sale, the general public can also see how much the city is offering and look to out-bid the city. Then, the proposal goes through two readings by the BOA (two meetings) before a final vote happens. Elicker said the whole thing takes a minimum of two if not three or four months.
With a land bank in place, the normal initial acquisition process plays out and then, it’ll go to the board, which can act quickly.

It’s the difference between government as ineffective bureaucracy and government as uniquely empowered agent of positive change.

Texas: A refurbished permanent affordable housing complex will be named after Beyoncé and her sister, Kelly Rowland. Their parents have been longtime supporters of the nonprofit that runs the supportive housing.

Ballot Initiatives

Arizona: And they’re off! Add Arizona to the list of states in which activists are seeking to put the codification of reproductive choice on the ballot. They just began collecting signatures for the initiative, with the aim of getting it before voters in November 2024.

Oregon: The mass decriminalization of hard drugs has had some difficult side effects, leading to what is right now notable public support for changes to the law first approved by voters in 2020. The question right now is which version of Measure 110, the proposed ballot initiative to revamp the law, makes it to the ballot.

There are two competing versions of the proposed initiative, one of which would alter the original law in far more places than the other. They wouldn’t be progressive changes, either, as they’d downplay addiction treatment and create a lot more wiggle room for increased law enforcement.

Naturally, it’s that latter version that’s being bankrolled by the state’s most prominent conservatives:

Columbia Sportswear CEO Tim Boyle put in $300,000, joined by $200,000 from Nike founder Phil Knight, $100,000 from Portland property owners the Goodman family, and $50,000 each from business magnates Ed Maletis and Jordan Schnitzer.

Why can’t these guys just stay on their private complexes and leave the rest of us alone?

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