At the end of last year, the Child Tax Credit was allowed to expire and
what do you know?
The following month, just last month, child poverty rose significantly.
Nobody could have seen it coming, but we do have the numbers.
The center on poverty and social policy at Columbia University said
that the child poverty rate rose from 12% in December to 17% last month,
an approximately 41% increase in one month.
That almost seems impossible but America found a way we are number one.
The study found that an additional 3.7 million children are now in
poverty relatively to the end of December.
With black and Latino c hildren seeing the biggest percentage point increases and
all it took was taking away one of the most beloved and
successful social programs for the past few decades.
And all that it was was for a portion of last year from July to December
parents received monthly payments worth up to $250 per child
as much as $300 if the children were under six years old.
61 million children benefited from this
program encompassing 36 million households.
And so it was incredibly popular and
that dropped child poverty by about a third that you get rid of it?
It goes back up by 41%.
All of this of course happening during an absolutely terrible public health
emergency with a number of different economic knock on effects from that
emergency.
And so it was popular,
it was working but the White House was unable to secure an extension of it.
And in fact Sen. Joe Manchin raised multiple objections to the child benefit
and said it was discouraging parents from working, which we wouldn't want that.
I mean what's worse than that?
Certainly not millions of children going hungry every single day.
Virtually all Republicans also of course opposed the Child Tax Credit.
And Washington was really worried about the deficit and stuff and
they're really worried about people taking advantage of the system.
So they killed it and what do you know?
40% or so increase in child poverty in one month.
>> So guys, it's not theoretical, it's real and it's not just a statistic,
it's 3.7 million American children are now back in poverty.
I wanna show you the two people most responsible.
These are the monsters named Joe Manchin and Kirsten Cinema.
And they single handedly said,yeah,
we're gonna drive those kids back into poverty and they did.
So these are the guys, these are the villains.
And again, that's not theoretical, it was their votes that made sure
that build back better with Child Tax Credit could not pass.
So you're looking at the two people that, isn't that amazing?
Just two people, >> Such power.
>> Drove nearly four million kids in the poverty and they couldn't care less.
Okay, now let me show you the guy who is the indifferent leader that allowed
them to do it without a fight at all and his name is Joe Biden.
Where's your fight?
You're gonna brag you care about your own legacy of course,
everybody in Washington is obsessed with only one thing, their effing ego, right?
And before he was bragging, look at all the big kids we lifted out of poverty.
Then Manchin said no, shut up, go away I'm not passing your bill and Joe Biden said,
okay, sure, fine there's no problem at all.
Where's your fight?
Nowhere okay, now, I'm thrilled to tell you, you can no longer brag about it okay?
I know you're gonna my ego, my legacy, my legacy.
Well, now you don't have a legacy either because you don't actually care.
When it came to the infrastructure bill that all of your donors benefited from,
there we saw Joe Biden fight.
He went and told [INAUDIBLE] you better pass it okay?
Manchin says no to build back better than the Child Tax Credit.
He's like, okay, fine, no problem at all we're moving on.
We moved on to voting rights.
We didn't pass that either.
I'm moving on from that.
What are you not gonna move on from?
So they drove those children's department, look, we're not the fake left
will also tell you the reality that every Republican is a monster.
If you don't know that by now cuz you're listening to right wing or fake left or
whoever you're listening to, every Republican is against those children.
They happily, gleefully drove them back into poverty okay?
But the Republicans are not in charge, the Democrats are so this one is on them.
They said they would do it and they didn't.
>> And it's just part of this pig headed American exceptionalism
that feeds our bodies to market gods were still in a pandemic.
We're just getting over yet another variant right knock on wood.
There's not another but of course if there is,
Biden's gonna say he didn't see it coming, how was I supposed to know?
My God, you need a mask?
What for?
But put on your mask.
It is insane, it is always blamed the victim in this country.
It is always pull yourself up from the bootstraps in the middle of an effing
pandemic.
And look guys 250 to 300 a month to lift four million
children out of poverty is not a lot of money, right?
It shows you how many people in this country, these are children, right?
Children aren't owning their own bank accounts by themselves.
These are families,
these are families who can't afford as we all know an unexpected $400 expense.
These are families with $250 a month they can do so much more.
Meanwhile you've got the NYPD busting thieves for
stealing baby formula and posing next to it like it's a meth bust?
Come on and we're supposed to care about petty crime when people are stealing stuff
for their children, their babies.
So again, like we're doing as Jake and I covered yesterday $770 billion dollars for
the defense budget and yet untold amount of money we could be making,
we could be saving where's the money gonna come from?
If you pay for universal paid leave, family leave, sick leave,
if you have expanded healthcare benefits, let alone medicare for all.
If you have Universal Child Care, if you extend the Child Tax Credit,
my God, we would be so much wealthier than we are and
we would live up to the idea that we are the best democracy on earth.
>> Yeah and my God, so this has affected obviously all sorts of families.
Let's bear in mind how many conservative families back into poverty now?
All the man, those populist, right wing populist of Fox News are going to be so
angry tonight.
Tucker Carlson is gonna do 40 minutes about those millions
of conservative families who are gonna be suffering as a result of this.
We're gonna talk in a little bit about political consequences of this sort
of thing.
It is bad enough if you have been dwelling in poverty,
ruled over by a government that has never cared and has never helped you?
Heads up to Biden, what do you think the people will do after they got a little
bit of help for a few months and then were cast back into poverty?
Might they be a little bit more angry actually?
And I also want you to remember everybody is rightfully angry about this story and
the numbers that we just gave you and they should be.
These are the people that are worst off, they've sunk back into poverty.
These are not the only people that have been negatively affected by getting rid of
that Child Tax Credit.
That is the people who shifted below the threshold for poverty.
Many, many millions more families have shifted not necessarily across
that arbitrary line, but their lives have now become materially more difficult.
Tens of millions of families lives are now harder as a result of this.
I do have one good thing cuz I know you like when politicians call out other
politicians I have an example of that on this particular issue.
AOC tweeted in response to this one US Senator ''heard'' stories about people
allegedly using the Child Tax Credit ''for drugs'' without any evidence or
data to back it up.
He then used that as justification and nuke entire national program,
causing millions of kids to fall into poverty in weeks.
Horrifying.
Meanwhile, the press talks about it like it's some beltway drama without ever
showing the people who are sleeping in bubble jackets with no heat or
the kids going hungry waiting for
some guy in a yacht to decide if they were fully human or not.
It's just shameful all of it.
>> There you go.
Yes, I do love that.
And again, it's not to vent its strategic, you have to put pressure on Joe Manchin.
Unfortunately AOC and the few just Democrats fighting out
there are in a vacuum because the media just,
thanks Manchin and Cinema or God's gift to humanity there.
So moderate, moderate, moderate representing their state as we've told you
a million times, it's not remotely true, it is not the moderate position.
The Child Tax Credit pulls it over 70% across America.
The moderate position is to do the Child Tax Credit and
they are not popular in their home states.
These provisions,
the Child Tax Credit is intensely popular in West Virginia and Arizona.
Any member of the press that tells you Manchin is doing it because of his home
state is a liar or is an incompetent buffoon that wouldn't know the facts if it
slapped him across the face.
Now last two things from me.
So all the fake hand wringing that Francesca referred to in Washington
to Steven Rattner, former Obama official and
Wall Street tycoon putting out an op ed today saying,
we can't do build back better than any of these provision cuz of the deficit.
First of all build back better is deficit neutral.
He says, okay, yeah, theoretically but I don't believe it.
You know what it's not deficit neutral?
The defense bill, the defense bill is not at all.
That doesn't care about the deficit just piles $800 billion dollars on top of
the deficit.
It is over four times larger than the entire build back better,
let alone the Child Tax Credit, which is a very small part of build back better.
Did Steve Rattner rant about that?
Nope, didn't care at all cuz he's a liar, he doesn't care about defense bill.
He doesn't care about the deficit, he doesn't care about debt.
All he cares about is money money money not to you,
to his beloved corporations instead.
Which leads me to my final point, why?
Why would you kill program this popular?
If you're a Democrat, aren't you at least interested in self preservation?
So why wouldn't you pass something that everybody in blue and red states loves?
Maybe they might love democrats if you kept it?
No, the donor class says they're getting too much money.
It's driving the prices up the wages.
We have to pay labor out.
We have labor shortages because we gave them crumbs and
now they can live off of crumbs $250 a month.
Now I can't pay them starvation slave wages anymore.
So make sure you take away the crumbs and back to the mines and
the politicians say yes sir, absolutely sir.
Even if it means their own career jumps off a cliff but
don't worry it won't because the press will always cover for them.
And tell you that they're wonderful moderates who are representing
their voters and that is nothing but a huge disgusting lie.
>> It's funny I agree with you Jake on the last point that they talk about
Kirsten Cinema and Joe Manchin as if they were moderates.
But I think the other thing is we've seen that they covered them wall to wall and
only about Kirsten Cinema and Joe Manchin and they were obsessed with them.
They just are too afraid to mention the donors.
They don't talk about all the handouts that Joe Manchin has gotten all the money
that he's made off of the coal industry.
They're not talking about the backdoor deals that Kirsten Cinema is making with
trade industries or pharmaceutical companies,
they're not talking about any of that.
It's almost like they were just sort of woke up and
decided to stymie the bill because they must have some sort of moderate centrist
little fairy dust that told them that this is gonna be bad for us later.
No, there's nothing magic about it, it is the money.
And I was talking about this in the situation room but
we're talking about with the revolving door project.
Max Moran who was like look, we need to make enemies, we need to stop being
afraid, liberals, centrists need to be stopped being afraid of making enemies.
We won't get anything done unless you make an enemy of
the corporate class and the 1%.
Otherwise, it's like gee where did all this poverty come from?
I mean, it's the hot dog situation perpetually.
>> [LAUGH]