Mitt Romney probably thought he had a winner. Providing more money for families with children would be popular with social conservatives. Making the program nearly universal eliminates any possible stench of “welfare” for lazy minorities. Finally, the program was to be funded by the elimination of overlapping subsidies and the SALT deduction, much used and loved in blue states. From the reactionary perspective, it looked like he had hit the trifecta.
But Romney didn’t reckon with the GOP’s Victorian side. The program was portrayed by Lee and Rubio, along with their allies, purely as an anti-poverty mechanism. It was then rejected on the basis that the recipients of the aid weren’t required to work. Only paying work, it seems, can really lift people out of poverty.
Romney had the better of the argument. The program was not purely an anti-poverty scheme; it was designed to help middle class people take better care of their children (and possibly have more), as well. And some of the premises of Rubio/Lee on the anti-poverty issue are definitely debatable. What if times are hard, and there are no minimum wage jobs to be had? And would the combination of a minimum wage job and a Rubio/Lee benefit really make the recipient of the benefit better off than a stay-at-home parent, after considering the substantial added cost of child care? I have my doubts.
When it is all said and done, I suspect the real problem with this program is the identity of the author. Romney is a pariah among the GOP. Anything he proposes is automatically suspect with the base and his more ambitious colleagues.