I was absolutely delighted to see this Marc Thiessen/Alyssa Rosenberg piece in the Washington Post today on how to come together across ideological lines to help families.
For both parties, a comprehensive family agenda should be a political imperative as well. As a candidate, President Biden promised to put his “whole soul” into bringing both parties together to do important things for the American people. By restoring divided government in 2022, midterm voters sent a clear message that they want both sides to fulfill that promise.
Family policy is a place to start, especially because Democrats and Republicans have already cooperated on a wide range of bills to tackle many of these problems. Despite the bipartisan goodwill, little family legislation has been enacted. It’s time for Biden and congressional leaders to make this a priority.
To nudge them along, we compiled a set of proposals to improve family life in the United States — from conception to college that are abortion-neutral and fiscally realistic. Compromise was inevitable: Alyssa set aside major investments in child care; Marc couldn’t persuade Alyssa to sign on for school vouchers. But the most heartening part of the exercise was how much we — and our congressional counterparts — agree on.
And I appreciated that this was included:
Finally, in the post-Dobbs world, we will need more loving families to open their homes to adoptive and foster children. One way to do so is by passing legislation expanding the adoption tax credit and making it fully refundable, a change to tax law that’s been a bipartisan priority for a decade, and that was most recently reintroduced by Davis alongside Reps. Blake D. Moore (R-Utah), Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa), Don Bacon (R-Neb.) and Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.). We should also increase federal adoption assistance funding, and funding for states to recruit, retain and support foster families.
I urge you to read the whole thing. Pro-life politicians need to communicate that they know parenthood is hard and expensive while working to end abortion in America. People will be more likely to agree that we don’t need abortion in America when they see that pro-lifers want to help women and children and families.
As I said earlier in the week, politics is the worst place to have to talk about abortion. But there are things that policy-makers can do to help get us to a place where people see life as plausible in all kinds of challenging circumstances.
The piece should be used to light a fire under someone to lead. As they remind us, there is a lot of legislation that exists that could help mothers and children and families. Act on some.