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REPUBLICANS ARE NOT 'PRO-FAMILY'

‘Missed All the Bible Verses’: Rubio Slammed for Demanding ‘Work Requirement’ for Parents to Get Child Poverty Check

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Nearly every morning U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) tweets a Bible quote to show he’s a devout Christian, but his policies often don’t align with his faith.

Here’s what Sen. Rubio tweeted Tuesday morning:

Hours earlier, on Monday night the Florida Republican Senator who is up for re-election next year voiced his displeasure with a proposal from Democrats to battle child poverty, a problem that has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Democrats want to expand the $2000 a year child tax credit, and then use those funds to send parents monthly checks of up to $300. It would be a big help for many Americans with children.

How many?

The Center for American Progress (CAP) last month reported nearly 11 million children in the United States are living in poverty. That’s about one out of every seven kids.

Senator Rubio says the Democrats’ proposal amounts to “welfare,” a word that for some reason is toxic among Republicans even though it appears in the U.S. Constitution. He is also advancing the lie that Americans experiencing poverty are lazy and don’t want to work, a true slap in the face given how his party’s policies and efforts made the coronavirus pandemic incalculably worse.

Ignoring the pandemic and high rates of unemployment, Rubio says that the federal government should not be sending parents monthly checks – much of which already belongs to the parents via existing tax code – unless there is a “work requirement” attached.

Read this short but devastating analysis from CAP:

More than 4 in 10 children live in a household struggling to meet basic expenses, and between 7 million and 11 million children live in households in which they are unable to eat enough because of the cost. When the pandemic forced schools to shift to distanced and virtual learning, it worsened the barriers to quality education for low-income children4 and pushed their parents, particularly mothers, to choose between caregiving and employment. Without serious interventions, an economic recovery will leave low-income and marginalized people—and their children—behind. Already, some calculations are finding that the child poverty rate has increased dramatically since the onset of the coronavirus crisis.

Rubio is getting slammed on social media:

 

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