Mona Charen: What we lost when the GOP lost itself
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In the typhoon of congressional brinkmanship we witnessed last week, one detail caught my eye that easily could have been lost in the gales. A group of 35 Republican senators signed a letter to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden about an aspect of the House reconciliation bill they find disturbing.
“As you know, current marriage penalties occur when a household’s overall tax bill increases due to a couple marrying and filing taxes jointly. … Unfortunately, despite its original rollout as part of the ‘American Families Plan,’ the current draft of the reconciliation bill takes an existing marriage penalty in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and makes it significantly worse. This is not the only marriage penalty created or worsened by the partisan bill.”
For the record, I think this objection is completely sound. If there’s one thing the social science literature is virtually unanimous about, it’s that two parents are better than one. And while marriage isn’t essential to ensuring that a child grows up in a stable home, — some cohabiting parents stay together for decades, and some single parents provide very stable homes — the association is extremely strong. Anyone concerned about child poverty needs to be concerned about marriage. Kids who grow up in two-parent families have a poverty rate of 7.5%, compared with 36.5% of those raised in single-parent homes.
It’s not just poverty. Kids raised in stable homes without a revolving door of new adult partners for their parents and new stepsiblings (actual or de facto) for themselves are healthier physically and psychologically. They are less likely to struggle in school, get in trouble with the law, engage in risky behaviors or get depressed and commit suicide. The United States has the dubious distinction of having more children living with only one adult (23%) than any other nation on earth. A Pew survey of 130 countries found that the global average is 7%.
There is one huge thing the government can do: Stop making things worse. Every tax or safety net-related marriage penalty should be sandblasted out of the code. The Republican senators are completely right about this. If it means the programs cost more, so be it. It’s worth it.
This is precisely the kind of perspective we need a healthy conservative party to advance. We need a party that is focused on the importance of the mediating institutions in society — families, churches, schools and community organizations — rather than simply on individuals and government. This is too frequently a blind spot for Democrats.
But today’s Republican Party has forfeited the benefit of the doubt. You need a certain moral standing to be taken seriously on matters like the marriage penalty. You rely on voters to believe that you are at least partly motivated by good policy. But when Sen. Mitch McConnell cynically filibusters a bill to raise the debt ceiling to cover bills his party helped to rack up; when Republicans open their ranks to the likes of Reps. Paul Gosar, Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene; when the party thwarts basic public health measures such as vaccines and masks; and when the party closes ranks around former President Trump by blocking an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 riot, well, people will doubt your bona fides.
Republicans also are endangering our democracy with their embrace of Trump’s election fraud fantasy. That’s the most urgent threat. But it’s also a loss for this country that the Republican Party is discrediting conservatism, because we can’t do without it.