Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.) fired back at Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) on Monday after the Republican vice presidential candidate defended his previous attacks on Democrats as “anti-family.”
Vance was asked about his past criticism during appearances on three Sunday political shows. He defended the comments and dismissed policy proposals, including expanding the child tax credit and banning surprise medical bills.
“I’m pro-family,” he told CNN. “I want us to have more families. And of course sometimes it doesn’t work out, sometimes for medical reasons, sometimes because you don’t meet the right person. But the point is that our country has become anti-family in its public policy.”
Ocasio-Cortez responded with a list of family-friendly measures proposed by the Democrats, including raising the minimum wage, introducing paid parental leave and improving access to health care.
“If Vance is so fixated on who has children, he must support family-friendly policies, right?” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on the social platform X.
She added: “Oh, right, he doesn’t. He just wants an excuse to surveil and oppress women.”
Ocasio-Cortez was one of the original targets of Vance’s “childless cat lady” remarks in 2021, and Vance said the same year that the New York Democrat had a “sociopathic attitude towards families.”
Vance has made family policy a central theme of his vice presidential campaign, although the Democrats quickly pushed backand pointed to the GOP’s positions on critical family-friendly measures.
The Democrats’ attacks on Vance over his family policies flared up again last week when he voted against an extension the child tax credit. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) used the controversy over Vance’s comments last week to put the measure on the ballot, even though the chances of it passing were slim.
“The Republicans in the Senate like to talk about being the party of families and businesses. So it is very strange that they are so aggressively opposed to expanding the child tax credit and rewarding businesses with the [research and development] tax credit,” Schumer said in the Senate.
