The Patriot Post® · Biden's Government Pre-K Not Okay With Parents
If the government can’t educate our kids, why would we trust it to raise them? Joe Biden doesn’t have a good answer for that, but it hasn’t stopped him from introducing another 13-digit spending plan to let the state babysit your toddler. He calls it the American Families Plan, a “free” daycare system that would give radical Leftists an even earlier grip on our children. But for a party who supposedly cares so much about “the science,” they certainly don’t give a fig here. After years of government-run Pre-K, the data all says it’s a bust. It’s certainly no comparison to an institution that costs taxpayers nothing: the intact family.
Before COVID, when parents didn’t have a front-row seat to the indoctrination the schools were teaching, Biden’s plan might have had a better reception. Now, after seeing what the government-run classrooms are passing off as “education,” moms and dads probably aren’t eager to put their children in the state’s care any sooner. If there’s one thing remote-learning families have figured out, it’s that the government isn’t interested in teaching your child — it’s interested in brainwashing them on history, race, gender, and sexuality. So while Biden may say he wants to make a “once-in-a-generation investment” into our children, more families will see it for what the program really is: getting more kids away from parents and into a government-controlled environment.
Of course, because of the pandemic and all of the disruptions associated with it, a lot of parents are overwhelmed. Kelsey Bohler, senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum, agrees that taking some of the burden off would be a huge relief for most families. The problem isn’t that the government wants to help — the problem is what kind of “help” the government is offering. Back during the Trump administration, the president and his daughter, Ivanka, insisted that the best thing Washington could do is put the money — and the decisions about child care — back in parents’ hands. The idea wasn’t to have the government more involved. It was to deliver a tax plan that would empower parents to make the best decisions for kids. The focus was on families — not federalization.
Biden’s idea is to plunk kids into a government-controlled daycare, where they’re subjected to all manners of racist propaganda — things like critical race theory, gender fluidity, and pre-K sex-ed. Instead of preaching anti-Americanism at age five, the extremists could get their clutches on kids when researchers say worldview is formed — as young as two and three.
But even from a purely neutral standpoint on values, Kelsey points out that there are “no definitive studies that say early education [or] universal daycares are beneficial to children. In fact, the research suggests the opposite.” Back when Barack Obama was pushing universal pre-K, people on both sides were wary. With good reason. The prototype, Head Start, wasn’t just only a failure by Washington’s standards, but by children’s. Even HHS admitted that after 48 years and $180 billion taxpayer dollars, its early education program offered “little” or “no” benefits for children. In some instances, it even had harmful effects. That’s why Biden had to cite studies from way back in the 1970s and 80s, Kelsey said. There’s just no evidence to support the idea that government knows better — or does better — than parents.
So what the Left is trying to do is entice families by throwing enormous subsidies at them when they know most of the country feels tired and overextended. “Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and the pursuant school closures,” Kelsey knows, “working moms are exhausted.” As a working mom herself, she knows how hard it is to juggle all of these new responsibilities and demands. “But the truth of the matter is: the number one thing that children need at these early ages is a loving mom [and] the support of their parents. And what the Biden administration — and really all of the Left — wants to do is push moms to give everything they have to the workforce and then put off their children to these government-run daycare facilities.” And it wants to do so “at the cost of punishing moms who decide to stay home or moms who decide to have an alternative child-care arrangement like I have. So I’m essentially being punished for prioritizing my child. And those who want to send their children to government-funded daycare get these massive, massive subsidies to do that.”
But here’s the thing, she reminds everyone: the kids don’t win. “Children win when women and working moms have flexible work arrangements that enable them to decide for themselves what type of childcare arrangements work for them and their families.” Working moms were doing great under Trump, Kelsey insists. Maybe the mainstream media didn’t report it, but in 2019, there were more women on the payroll in the U.S. workforce than men. “Women were excelling across the board. Their wages were rising, particularly for those on the bottom quarter of the income spectrum. And companies across the board were offering greater benefits…”
And what does the Biden administration propose to do? “Not go back to our pro-growth agenda of tax cuts and deregulation. He wants to double down on all these regulations that make it so hard to run a business, to be an employee, and for women to stay in the workforce because they lack that ability to have a flexible work schedule. Because Biden wants everybody — every woman and every man in America — to have a nine-to-five union job, which we know especially for working moms, is not what women want.” Most families — including the lower-income families the Left claims to want to help — think it’s ideal to have one stay-at-home parent and one working parent. “Both parents working fulltime and using paid childcare,” survey data argues, “was the least popular choice for lower-income respondents.”
As usual for the Left, this isn’t about what Americans want — or even what’s in the best interest of our children. This is about furthering their twisted agenda at the earliest possible age. That’s why so many moms have dropped out of the workforce, Kelsey argues — because “they don’t trust public education to teach their kids basic math, reading, and science.” These days, a majority of them are homeschooling or looking for other options. “And this isn’t just going to end when the pandemic ends. We’re going to see parents doubling down on school choice, which is why [that type of] legislation is more important now than ever. That has to happen at the state level. But what Biden is proposing to do would bring us in the complete opposite direction, more government-run schools and less choice for parents and their and their families.”
Parents need to fight back and demand the freedom to make their own decisions. At the end of the day, kids don’t need the government’s guidance — they need yours. And as a country, we should be doing everything we can to make that possible.
Originally published here.
Pro-life Lubbock Tells Abortion: No Trespassing!
The states aren’t just taking the fight to the Left on election reform. They’re making it clear to the Biden administration and every national Democrat that their radical social agenda doesn’t fly in America — not on gender and certainly not on life. If this year plays out the way some liberals think, “2021 will end up as the most damaging anti-abortion state legislative session in a decade.” Maybe, the Left-leaning Guttmacher Institute points out, “ever.”
Since January, 536 pro-life bills have been introduced in 46 states, the group says — and a good number of them (146) ban abortion after a certain point in pregnancy. It’s “unprecedented,” researchers say. Already, 61 pro-life proposals have passed “putting the 2021 legislative session on track to surpass the record set in 2011.” And the kicker, Guttmacher agrees, is that most of them are an open invitation for the Supreme Court to revisit Roe v. Wade.
“To put those figures in context, by this time in 2011 — the year previously regarded as the most hostile to abortion rights since Roe was decided — 42 restrictions had been enacted, including six bans,” the former research arm of Planned Parenthood pointed out.
And that doesn’t include any of the momentum on the local level. In communities like Lubbock, Texas, voters are banding together to keep abortion outside the city limits. By designating themselves “sanctuary cities for the unborn,” a trend that started in 2019 in the state, a growing number of towns are making it clear that groups like Planned Parenthood aren’t welcome.
In Lubbock, the city council actually rejected the idea, claiming it was somehow unconstitutional. Even that didn’t deter the locals, who decided to put the issue through the petition process. The ordinance, area reporters say, was the only item on the ballot last weekend — and it passed 62 percent to 38 percent. Jim Baxa, one of the West Texas for Life organizers, was thrilled. “All these churches banded together. There were 200 churches in the City of Lubbock, working together to stand up for life. It’s excellent.”
Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas wasn’t inclined to agree, and on Saturday night released a statement insisting that getting rid of them wouldn’t be so easy. Unlike the other sanctuary cities for the unborn, Lubbock is the first one with an abortion business. So it’ll be interesting to see what sort of court challenges this idea sparks. Already, the nation’s biggest abortion network is claiming, “Planned Parenthood is a trusted resource for anyone in Lubbock and the surrounding communities for essential healthcare services. We want Lubbock residents to know: Our doors are open and we will continue to advocate for our patients, no matter what.”
Lubbock Mayor Dan Pope, meanwhile, has made it clear that the city council will canvas the votes next week, and the ordinance will go into effect as early as June 1. As state Rep. Dustin Burrows (R) said, “Today is a victory for life and proof that the silent majority will still stand up for its Christian conservative values.”
The voters have spoken in Lubbock and states across the country. If President Biden and his party insist on pushing an extreme abortion agenda, then take it from Texas: they do so at their peril.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.