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JD Vance Suggested America Should ‘Punish’ People for Not Having Children

Trump vice presidential running mate JD Vance, under fire for his 2021 remarks calling Democrats “childless cat ladies” and saying parents should be given more voting rights than those without children, is now being criticized after video resurfaced of him suggesting people who don’t have children should be punished, because not having kids is “bad.”
Vance, closely tied to the “broligarch” class of right-wing tech billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, is a venture capitalist whose memoir catapulted him to national attention, which he parlayed into a successful U.S. Senate run with the backing of his uber-wealthy mentors.
Before announcing his 2022 Senate run, Vance made numerous public appearances, including sharing his extremist views with powerful talk show host, far-right wing activist, and Christian nationalist Charlie Kirk.
“So JD,” Kirk, a member of the highly-secretive Council on National Policy asked, according to ABC News, “what are you going to do to change this conversation? Everything we have to do should be about moving ideas from unthinkable, to sensible, to popular, to policy.”
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“In response,” ABC News reports, “Vance, who at the time had not yet officially launched his 2022 Senate campaign, suggested that the country needed to ‘reward the things that we think are good’ and ‘punish the things that we think are bad’ — before suggesting that individuals without children should be taxed at a higher rate than those with children.”
The full quote, contained in video (below) posted Friday by the liberal super PAC and opposition research firm American Bridge, which comports with ABC News’ reporting, is, “we need to reward the things that we think are good and punish the things that we think are bad. So you talk about tax policy, let’s tax the things that are bad and not tax the things that are good. If you’re making $100,000, $400,000 a year and you’ve got three kids, you should pay a different, lower rate than if you are making the same amount of money and you don’t have any kids. It’s that simple.”
In that same year, 2021, Vance called universal child care, “a massive subsidy to the lifestyle preferences of the affluent over the preferences of the middle and working class.”
Watch the video below or at this link.
Unreal. JD Vance claimed childless adults should pay a higher tax rate than those with children because we should “punish the things that we think are bad.” pic.twitter.com/LpIKAyLlOe
— American Bridge 21st Century (@American_Bridge) July 26, 2024
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