More family values stuff from the right. Huh? Did I say that? I meant left. Check it out.
See those Dems work over families
by Don Feder
10/14/98
Easily the most irritating aspect of the
campaign season is the Democratic refrain
about "working families."
In introducing the president and vice
president at a Boston fund-raiser in
September, Sen. Ted Kennedy hailed them
as "the home-run kings of working
families." Presumably, Clinton and Gore
copped this prestigious title by opposing
educational vouchers for the poor and tax
cuts for the middle class.
Kennedy looks as if he never lifted
anything heavier than a cocktail shaker
and hasn't missed a meal since the
Roosevelt administration (Teddy's).
The spectacle of this plutocrat holding
forth on "working families," at a
$1,000-a-plate gala no less, is rich in
irony. What next, a Clinton sermon on the
Seventh Commandment (adultery)?
Still, Democrats are addicted to the
catchphrase. An ad for Democratic
gubernatorial candidate Scott Harshbarger
charges that acting Gov. Paul Cellucci's
tax cuts "favor the rich," while his own
target "working families."
You will search in vain through the liberal
lexicon for a definition of "working
families," which surely is intentional. The
never-defined phrase can mean anything.
"Working families" has such a nice, homey
ring. It conjures up an image of Mom and
Dad at the kitchen table, with a pile of
bills in front of them, making out the
household budget -- trying to stretch
Dad's paycheck to cover Junior's braces
and Sis' piano lessons. Mom wears an
apron, Dad a sweater with elbow patches.
By "working families," apparently
Democrats do not mean the subsidized
poor (although one campaign press aide
assured me that a welfare mother who
worked 20 hours a week would qualify
because she was "struggling"), nor the
disgusting rich, even though many of them
struggled to make their wealth and work
just as hard to keep it from rapacious
politicians.
Instead, the standard appears to be one
of exertion in the face of obstacles
combined with an income cap.
In my family, everyone works, from my
86-year-old mother who knits afghans for
friends and relatives to my 17-year-old
son who delivers pizzas after school.
I get up at 5:15 a.m. to drive an hour and
a half, each way, to the office and put in
8-hour days. With work at home in the
evenings and weekends, the total often
rises to 60-hours a week.
Still, malefactor of great wealth that I am,
my family's income is more than twice that
of the typical American family. Even
though we're working hard to meet
mortgage and car payments, alas, we do
not qualify as a working family.
At least, that's the way we're treated by
the self-proclaimed party of same.
On those rare occasions when Democrats
can bring themselves to propose a tax
cut, there's always an income ceiling well
below our earnings, on the theory that it
would be a mortal sin to reduce the tax
burden of the undeserving rich, even
though those in upper income-brackets
pay most of the federal taxes. According
to the Tax Foundation, the top 10 percent
of income-earners pay 60 percent of
federal income taxes.
Faced with a Republican Congress in 1995,
Clinton proposed a $500 per-child tax
credit that began to diminish at $60,000
(for a two wage-earner family) and
disappeared completely at $75,000. This is
the Democrats' line of demarcation, above
which a family no longer struggles.
The Feders will just have to overcome
their disappointment at not being
designated a "working family" by popping a
few bottles of Dom Perignon on our yacht.
The Democrats' agenda for working
families can be summed up in the phrase,
"Let them eat social programs."
They are forever ballyhooing this or that
statist scheme -- subsidized child care, a
patient's "bill of rights," minimum-wage
hikes, yet more money shoved down the
sinkhole of public education -- as the
salvation of working families.
After 65 years of New Deals, Fair Deals,
New Frontiers, Great Societies, etc., you'd
think we would have arrived at
working-family nirvana, instead of a
situation where few families can get by on
one paycheck.
Like the carnival hustler, the Democrats
hope we don't notice what they have up
their sleeves -- taxes (now consuming 38
percent of the average family's income),
business-annihilating regulations, trade
policies that export jobs and support for
quotas that deprive certain families of
employment and educational opportunities
for belonging to the wrong race.
The Democrats care about "working
families" -- the way timber companies
care about tree frogs. |
