Read one of the dumbest OP EDs in
the latest USA Today issue.
And it had to do with why families
shouldn't be receiving the child
tax credit.
Now, there are few tax deductions
that ordinary Americans
get to take advantage of.
One of them has been the child
deduction, right?
So you have kids,
it's really expensive to have kids
in the United States, a country
that doesn't provide any support.
Childcare is astronomical.
It makes life very difficult for
parents, so like you get this
measly like tax deduction for
having kids, just to make it a
little less unbearable financially.
And, Nick Adolphsen in USA today
writes about Biden's child
tax credit, which passed in
his coronavirus relief bill.
And he thinks it's a bad idea.
I mean, he's got a bunch of kids,
he's been taking advantage of it,
but he thinks it's very naughty and
very wrong.
Okay, Why?
And by the way,
let me just remind you all that
the only thing Biden did with his
policy is he made it so the money
is direct deposited into family's
bank accounts several times a year.
So they have access to that money
in an easier way so they can pay
for the unbearable experience of
having children in this country
that provides no support.
That's all he did.
And by the way, it's supposed to
lift 50% of children out
of poverty, not 100%, just 50%,
but that's a little too extreme for
this OP ED writer.
Now let me tell you what he wrote,
we're receiving the new child tax
credit created by President Joe
Biden and congressional Democrats
in March, which they're now
trying to extend through at least
next year in their multi
trillion dollar spending bill.
But it would be better for us, and
America, if these checks stopped.
Would it be better for us
in America of these checks stopped?
Let me give you his ridiculous
argument.
It's true parenting is a slog.
We have four kids ages seven, five,
three and six months and every day
is somehow crazier than the last.
But does that really mean that
Americans need Washington to pay us
up to $3600 for
each kid up to age six and
$3000 per kid ages six through 17?
As nice as that sounds,
the child tax credit
is riddled with problems.
And I'll give you the incredibly
shallow, ridiculous problems that
he mentions in just a moment.
But let me just remind you all,
this isn't an OP ED in regard to
Trump's tax cuts for the rich,
which will cost this country $2
trillion over 10 years, one decade,
okay?
He's not writing about that,
he's not worried about that.
He's worried about helping American
families who have children in
a country that doesn't have child
care provided for.
That doesn't have a lot,
doesn't have paid family leave
provided for, yeah,
you better go after those parents.
Those parents ripping off
the government, having kids and
getting tax breaks because of it.
I mean, this is the kind of garbage
that dominates the narrative in
our corporate media.
>> 100%, that's exactly where I was
going with it.
If you're wondering why all of
a sudden all of corporate media is
once attacking anything that might
help you guys including build back
better, which has passed the House,
but not passed the Senate that
they're giving a giant assistant
mansion in cinema and
trying to kill it.
They've attacked in 1000
different ways.
This particular attack against
the child tax credit, which is
intensely popular is designed
because business interests think
it's making people comfortable.
And a lot of them are withdrawing
from the workforce because we pay
them so little that even when you
give them something like 800 bucks,
they think I can survive on that
even with my kids because my job is
so terrible and pays me so little,
I might not go back.
And so the business interests
are in a panic.
They're like, this might drive up
wages, we might actually have to
pay a living wage to our employees
and not treat them as cattle.
This is outrageous.
Have every corrupt person in
corporate media go and tell people
they should not get what they want.
They all want this,
it's enormously popular.
Do not give it to them,
lie to everybody, corporate media,
do propaganda all at once say, you
don't want that child tax credit.
You want to give it back.
I mean, the poor wealthy, what are
they ever going to do by the way,
the child tax credit is capped, so
the wealthy cannot get it.
So if you get make over
$400,000 a couple, you cannot give
the child tax credit.
So this doesn't help
the wealthy at all.
So they caught extra feelings
over it.
>> Well, that's fascinating Cenk
because if you read this OP ED by
Nick Adolphsen, who by the way, is
a State Government Affairs Director
at the Foundation for
Government Accountability,
you would think that this is going
to extremely wealthy people, right?
He says the following, the families
of nearly 60 million children
are getting these monthly checks,
including families with
good paying jobs.
Families like mine will quickly
come to demand taxpayer funded
checks.
Worse, will come to depend on
the money.
Okay, so what you said Cenk is so
accurate, because in order for
these corporations to thrive the
way that they had been thriving,
they had to make workers so
desperate that they had no
choice but
to be exploited the way they were
being exploited by their employers.
And now all of a sudden there's one
tiny little policy that benefits
working American families to
the point where maybe they're not
as desperate and these companies
are like, we can't have it.
No, they're going to come to expect
government money, we can't have it.
But when it comes to corporate
welfare, never a word about that,
right?
Because it creates jobs except
it doesn't.
Time after time I mean we showed
you in an extensive reporting that
was also done by TYT investigates,
the second the Trump tax cuts
passed, what happened?
Companies laid a bunch of people
off, did not create more jobs,
complete and utter lie.
But again,
that's not what Nick Adolphsen is
focusing on in this OP ED.
He's going after American families
in regard to a policy that's
supposed to lift 50% of children
living in poverty out of poverty.
So yeah, this should be the top
target, right, garbage.
And by the way, it's not only
middle income families he has
a problem with, he's like, look,
I don't know if we should be giving
this to poor families either.
He says yet if the enhanced tax
credit is limited to low income
families, it will still suffer from
major issues, especially its lack
of connection to work.
Normally I have to work hard for
$800, but this money came exactly.
But this money came regardless of
the effort I put in.
While my wife and
I recognize that raising kids is
its own form of work, it's a labor
of love not a day at the office.
I can't help but feel that
my work is somehow diminished and
even unnecessary.
>> That's hilarious.
Guys, he works no, no, I got to say
he works at a think tank.
So, the point of the think tanks,
especially the right wing ones once
funded by the Chamber of Commerce
and other business interests is to
do propaganda.
So here he is, USA Today lets him
do propaganda as this OP ED.
And he says, now,
normally my work is rewarded.
Well, that's because your work
is to lie to people, okay?
And that's what you're doing in
this article.
And he's like,
normally I have to work hard,
I got to roll up my sleeves.
I got to come up with some BS
excuse why
you shouldn't get the money.
That's what they pay him for,
his hard work is to lie to you.
It's amazing anything is, well,
I'm owed that because I mean I,
I tricked you guys so
I get the money and
you don't, that's really hard work.
That's super hard work.
That's what I get paid for, and
now they're just giving it out.
It's outrageous.
Look, guys, there's this guy who
gets paid to do propaganda,
that is very literal, okay?
Saying that you feel entitled,
hilarious and ironic.
Secondly, as Ana pointed out the
biggest corporations in America and
all across the world by the way,
got trillions of dollars at
the beginning of Covid, trillions.
>> Yep, trillions.
>> But Adolphsen wasn't out there
going, I can't believe
the company's got handouts then now
they'll never work for a living.
It's going to rob companies of
their employees.
Yeah.
Well that's what it's
going to actually do.
He's like, but how could anybody
ever work if they got money for
free like I do, wait, what, okay?
Or like my corporate donors do.
Wait, what?
So he doesn't make that argument,
by the way,
this is part of the campaign,
not just the child tax credit.
Now I've seen a new line of attack
against build back better bill to
there's a provision in there about
immigrants.
So then Rasmussen,
a right wing organization goes and
pulls that in West Virginia and
says, do you hate immigrants?
And they get an answer of yes,
okay?
And they're like, that's it,
West Virginia doesn't want it,
Manchin's right,
kill the whole thing.
So it is corporate politicians
working in league with corporate
media, to make sure you never get
anything from your government.
>> And finally, since you
mentioned Manchin, I can't help but
talk about the positive
reinforcement that's offered to
Manchin for serving as an obstacle
in the passage of a more robust
social spending package.
As Adolphsen writes in this OP ED,
Manchin seems to be the only
democrat who understands that's
wrong.
He has demanded a work requirement
consistent with virtually every
other federal family support
program over the past 30 years.
It's unclear whether he'll succeed.
I mean, he's already succeeded
quite a bit because the rest of
the party is pressuring him to cave
and accept an extension.
But he's right to wonder why we
need a policy that pushes people to
the economy sidelines instead of
keeping them in the game.
So let me just know one
other thing.
So they want work requirements in
order for parents to receive this
child tax credit.
So they're totally fine.
Like they're just saying it
out loud.
Like let me just help you guys
reading between the lines here,
children should starve and
suffer because we're mad that their
parents don't have a job yet.
That's what that is.
That's exactly what that, there
needs to be work requirements.
We're talking about children,
in a country that provides zero
support for parents who have kids.
>> So guys,
the personal responsibility is
a punch line that they use for
corporate interests.
Why?
It doesn't have to
be personal responsibility
is a good thing, right?
But they take trillions of dollars,
the parent companies do funny
twists of words there,
turn of words there.
But the parent company takes
trillions of dollars from
the government, and then says,
the minute you get anything,
they're bums, they're not working,
driving back to work and
at very low wages, very, very do
not raise the minimum wage, okay?
We're driving back to work, and
then if they don't work for
us at low wages, not market wages
artificially depress the wages
through government action and
then say, well look it's because
of personal responsibility.
It's not that I'm trying to make
a buck off of you, it's that
I need you to be more responsible.
So the companies that got trillions
of dollars don't have to be
responsible, and they're not bums,
and they don't get lazy when they
get free money.
But if you don't work for subhuman
wages, then you're a bum who's not
taking personal responsibility.
Hey, Nick, get out there and
call them all bums,
that's what we pay you for Nick.
Get out there and
do your goddamn job, which is
a line of the American people and
make sure you steal their money and
take it for us.
So all these corporate think tanks
are literally marketing for
the great American robbery where
corporations take trillions of
dollars and make sure that we don't
increase your wages at all.
And you see CNN and MSNBC anchors,
forget Fox News, CNN, MSNBC anchors
all complaining on air.
The higher wages
of driving up inflation,
and inflation is a big problem.
We can't have higher wages,
make sure that not only they drive
him back to work, but
have the lowest wages possible.
Personal responsibility,
my ass, they never
take responsibility for that.
This is all a trick so that
they can make more money off of you