Democrats on Capitol Hill are sharply criticizing Republican Senator JD Vance of Ohio for accusing them of being “anti-family,” pointing to a series of child-friendly social benefits that they have long advocated in the face of Republican opposition.
Vance, who was recently appointed vice president under former President Trump, has attracted attention in recent days for repeatedly accusing Democrats of being an “anti-child” party, citing liberal concerns about the human impact on climate change, among other things.
Democrats hope to bring the issue of working families’ problems to the forefront ahead of the November election, highlighting a number of proposals they favor – including efforts to expand the child tax credit, augment paid family leave and reduce child care costs – proposals they say refute Vance’s harsh accusations.
“JD Vance’s comments are as unfounded as they are polarizing, and show how ill-prepared he would be to serve as vice president, let alone one day become president,” Democratic Rep. Chrissy Houlahan said in an email. “The truth is that Democrats are the ones who are committed to policies that truly support American families and children, biological and non-biological.”
Democrats see an opportunity this week to gain a lead over Vance and the Republicans in the Senate, with a Vote on a long-delayed extension of the child allowance.
After easily passing the House in January, the tax bill was now stalled in the upper chamber amid conservative opposition, giving Democrats an opportunity to portray Republicans as opposed to measures that would support children and families.
“I hope Republicans here in the Senate will join us,” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (DN.Y.) said in the chamber on Tuesday. “Having senators speak is one way to make progress on important issues. It can bring important issues to the forefront.”
The partisan battle over children, families and which side helps them more is nothing recent on Capitol Hill. But it was brought to the forefront this month after reports emerged that Vance, as a 2021 Senate candidate, had called Democratic leaders “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are unhappy with their own lives … and therefore want to make the rest of the country unhappy, too.” Among the lawmakers he singled out was Vice President Harris, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, who has two stepchildren.
“The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” Vance told Tucker Carlson at the time.
The resurfacing of these comments sparked a storm of outrage across the country, drawing criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike. Many were quick to point to America’s opulent history of notable childless figures – a list that includes Founding Fathers like George Washington, powerful conservative women like former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and current Republican Senators Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) and Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) – and rushed to the aid of stepparents and adoptive parents.
The uproar has forced Trump into a occasional defensive stance. Appears on Monday on Fox NewsHe told host Laura Ingraham that Vance simply “loves” family, but also stressed that people without children “are just as good as anyone else.”
Vance, for his part does not give inIn a series of public appearances, he reiterated the suggestion that people without children lack the unique “perspective” of their parents, while reinforcing the charge that the Democrats as a party have taken a position that discourages reproduction.
“The left has become increasingly explicitly anti-child and anti-family. They have encouraged young families not to have children at all because of concerns about climate change,” Vance, a 39-year-old father of three, told Fox News’ Trey Gowdy this week.
“This is not a criticism of everyone who does not have children, and it never was. This is a lie from the left,” he continued. “It is a criticism of the left’s increasingly anti-parent and anti-child attitude.”
Those comments are not going over well with Democrats in both chambers, especially those who have been pushing for years to create recent federal benefits for working families but have so far run into a wall in the form of Republicans who oppose creating recent federal programs, increasing federal spending, or both.
For example, not a single Republican supported the American Rescue Plan, President Biden’s emergency Covid-19 relief package that included $24 billion to support child care facilities survive the health crisis.
“The [GOP] Support for child care has really eroded in the Trump era. It’s one of the most astonishing examples of how the Republican Party has turned away from family-friendly economic policies,” a Democratic aide said this week. “Without the American Rescue Plan, there would be no child care industry.”
More recently, Project 2025 – a sweeping conservative policy program put together with support from members of Trump’s inner circle – proposes abolishing Head Start, which provides health, education and childcare services to children from low-income families. Democrats highlight the document as further evidence that Republicans get it wrong when they accuse Democrats of being anti-family.
“The Republicans’ Project 2025 would directly hurt families – many of whom work hard to make ends meet,” said Representative Judy Chu (D-Calif.) in an email. “This includes passing measures that target before-school and after-school programs, cut Medicaid, slash nutrition programs, and eliminate free school meals.”
“Punishing hungry children is disgraceful,” she added, “but that is exactly what they intend to do.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment on Vance’s comments or the Democrats’ family benefits program. They also declined to comment on the tax proposal that is set to be voted on this week.
Democratic proposals include the Family Act, introduced by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut), which would create a federal paid family and medical leave program; the Childcare Stabilization Act, introduced by Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (Massachusetts), which would augment federal funding for child care to pandemic levels; and the Childcare Is Infrastructure Act, also introduced by Clark, which would provide financial assistance to educators who work in child care.
Democrats are portraying this year’s election as a referendum on the fate of these bills, while also highlighting the erosion of women’s reproductive rights that has been passed in many Republican-led states in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade – a ruling made possible by the addition of three conservative justices under Trump.
“Donald Trump and JD Vance are determined to control if, when and how you start a family,” Clark said in an email. “They vilify couples struggling to have children while trying to ban IVF. They want to enforce government-mandated pregnancy while cutting child care and raising taxes on working families.”
“We will have to make a clear decision in the coming months.”
The Senate vote on the child tax credit will add to the debate this week. The tax bill would augment the refundable amount of the child tax credit to $1,900 for 2024 and $2,000 for 2025. It also provides several tax breaks for businesses, including full depreciation of research and development expenses, accelerated depreciation schedules and a looser cap on the deduction of interest expenses.
Republicans argue against the credit expansion on the grounds that it is not tied to sufficient work requirements and that it may also be accessible to non-Americans.
“Crucially, the bill weakens work requirements for welfare recipients and continues Congress’s longstanding push to disguise welfare benefits as ‘tax breaks.’ The cash benefits contained in the bill are socially harmful,” Robert Rector, a fellow at the right-leaning Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank, wrote in an analysis of the bill in January.
The child tax credit reached mega-status during the pandemic, when its expansion lifted millions of children out of poverty virtually overnight before its expiration plunged them back into poverty.
According to the Census Bureau, poverty in the United States fell in many ways in 2021, reflecting an overall improvement in economic conditions. Changes in the tax system lifted 7.3 million children out of poverty.
The child poverty rate in the United States has “more than doubled, from 5.2 percent in 2021 to 12.4 percent in 2022,” the Census Bureau reported in 2023.
While the bill is not expected to pass despite a Republican filibuster, Schumer said the vote was still valuable because it “puts pressure on Republicans to show where they stand on important issues.”
“This week, the American people will have the opportunity to see which senators actually support tax relief for parents, businesses and housing,” he said, “and who opposes it.”
