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The Heritage Foundation wants a “Manhattan Project for the nuclear family” to boost marriage and birth rates.
Its draft proposals are landing like an atomic bomb among proponents of free markets who had previously been aligned with the leading conservative think tank.
A draft executive summary of the forthcoming family policy paper that is circulating among conservative economic policy types proposes substantial tax and cash incentives for marriage and childbirth.
It’s clear that Heritage is going all-in on family policy. A speech Heritage President Kevin Roberts gave at the National Conservatism Conference last week also previewed that family policy will be a cornerstone of the organization’s policy agenda.
Prudence, Roberts argued, “recognizes that the interests of the family and the national interest are not merely aligned, they are one and the same. It demands that we ask of every policy, every proposal: Will this strengthen the American family?” Roberts said.
I got a copy of the draft Heritage Foundation family policy paper executive summary that calls for a whole-of-government “Manhattan Project to restore the nuclear family,” as first reported by the Washington Post last week.
Here are some new details about the big, bold tax and economic proposals to boost marriage and birth outlined in that draft and giving some free-market advocates heartburn:
- Make the $17,280 adoption tax credit eligible for married parents of newborns, with unmarried parents eligible for half that amount, distributed annually in four equal installments.
- Make that credit 25% more — $21,600 — for married parents who already have two or more children, as a “Large Family Bonus” to “acknowledge the importance of large families.”
- Build on the idea of Trump Accounts (tax-advantaged savings accounts with $1,000 federal contribution for babies born between 2025 and 2028) by bumping up the deposit to $2,000.
- Plus, create a $2,000 deposit in another account redeemable only upon legal marriage, and that becomes taxable at age 30 to “incentivize marriage when children are most likely to be conceived.”
- “Make every credit, program, and tax benefit provided for paid childcare available for parental child raising,” arguing that programs like childcare tax credits and Head Start are “pushing both parents into the workforce at the cost of time spent raising their children as many prefer.”
Those ideas are included under the “Start Supporting Married Families” pillar of proposals. It also calls for the government to “Stop Punishing Married Families,” listing changes to public assistance programs that conservatives have long argued creates a “marriage penalty,” in addition to stricter work requirements for able-bodied adults.
The third “Restore the American Dream” pillar argues that high costs have prohibited Americans from achieving the family ideal, calling for not only a strong economy and a nation free from debt, but a “restoration of our national culture and spirit.” It promises recommendations to address the problems of “a decline in religious attendance, idolization of careerism, a broken education system, and through predatory tech, drug (legal and illegal), and pornography industries.”
Heritage hasn’t confirmed the authenticity of the draft details — and of course, a draft is subject to change. The final product is expected to be rolled out in the coming weeks.
But it’s already getting sharp pushback within the conservative movement based on the leaked draft.
Joel Griffith, a senior fellow at Advancing American Freedom who previously worked at Heritage, balked at the economic policy proposals articulated in the draft — pointing out that Hungary saw just a “modest bump in the birth rate” after its government made substantial investments on subsidies intended to boost the birth rate.
Griffith estimated that the first-year costs of the proposal would be about $80 billion annually, a sum that he says “would exceed the cost of Obamacare annually as recently as 2018,” pointing to the $57 billion cost of Affordable Care Act subsidies that year.
“It’s on par with the expansion of government that we saw with Obamacare,” Griffith said.
Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy at Heritage, called the comparisons to Obamacare “ridiculous.” The whole of the proposal, he said, would result in tax savings for working families — but that actual numbers would have to wait for the paper’s official release.
The Post story last week also raised eyebrows with some surprising quotes from two unnamed sources within the think tank alarmed about the paper. One compared it to “eugenics” and another decried the socially conservative think tanks proposal’s as “social engineering” that amounts to “an outright steamrolling of the limited government folks.”
Severino noted that Heritage has long opposed abortion, particularly abortions based on a down syndrome diagnosis, and has been on record decrying abortion clinics targeting minority neighborhoods.
The draft, meanwhile, decries “extraordinary technical solutions” like IVF and genetic screening championed by some pro-natalists that “envisions a world of artificial wombs and custom ordered lab-created babies on demand.”
When it comes to “social engineering,” Severino noted that incentives for marriage and recognizing it as a social good are reflected far and wide in U.S. law, from tax filing being based on marital status to approving green cards faster for a spouse.
“The family is on life support, and we’re in danger of losing the patient, that’s why we have to meet the moment and mobilize so that future generations will grow up in a vibrant, flourishing nation, not a declining one,” Severino said
And the draft recognizes that it is challenging longtime conservative thought: “For family policy to succeed, old orthodoxies must be re-examined and innovative approaches embraced, but more than that, we need to mobilize a nation to meet this moment. We need a Manhattan Project to restore the nuclear family.”
Welcome to The Movement, a weekly newsletter looking at the influences and debates on the right in Washington. I’m Emily Brooks, House leadership reporter at The Hill. Tell me what’s on your radar: ebrooks@thehill.com.
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TRANSGENDER GUN BAN CLASHES WITH 2A BASE
Conservative anti-transgender activism is crashing into the right-wing base of support for gun rights in wake of the shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school.
The Daily Wire’s Mary Margaret Olohan and several other outlets reported last week that the Department of Justice is considering ways to block transgender individuals from buying firearms, centering on the claim that transgender people have a mental disorder. A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment on specifics, saying the department is “actively considering a range of options.”
The reporting follows calls from some conservatives to crack down on transgender people’s rights in wake of the shooting. Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, for instance, posted: “If you are crazy enough to want to hormonally and surgically ‘change your sex,’ you have a mental disorder, and you are too crazy to own a firearm.”
But Second Amendment groups are pushing back hard.
- National Rifle Association: “NRA does not, and will not, support any policy proposals that implement sweeping gun bans that arbitrarily strip law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights without due process.”
- National Association for Gun Rights President Dudley Brown: “As history proves, any new rules the government invents today will be abused against ill-favored communities, including conservatives and law-abiding gun owners, tomorrow. Our advice to the decision-makers over at the ATF, DOJ, and FBI is to stop chasing headlines on the back of the Second Amendment and focus on preserving and protecting gun rights so that law-abiding Americans can defend their loved ones from violent nutcases, criminals, and gang members.”
- Gun Owners of America Senior Vice President Erich Pratt: “Adding any new category of persons to the unconstitutionally broad ‘mental defective’ category will not only block Americans from purchasing firearms but could result in door-to-door gun confiscation from that new category of individuals …. The mental defective gun ban statute is ripe for abuse, and we’ve already seen it weaponized to disarm more than a quarter of a million veterans. We need the Justice Department to scrap this new gun control and re-focus on restoring our rights which were infringed by the Biden Administration.”
And Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who founded the Second Amendment Caucus in the House, told me it’s a “terrible idea.”
“Nobody should be deprived of their right to keep and bear arms unless they’ve been adjudicated by an actual court as being mentally defective,” Massie said.
“I don’t think a court can broadly say that an individual is merely defective based on gender dysmorphia. They could adjudicate cases individually,” he added. But Massie did say there should be information provided about what kind of drugs have been used by mass public shooters.
ON MY CALENDAR
- Wednesday, Sept. 10: Tea Party Patriots Action holds a rally outside the Capitol to support the SAVE Act, concluding three-week nationwide bus tour. Noon.
- Tuesday, Sept. 16: Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro speaks with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts about his new book,. 4 p.m., in-person by invite and online.
THREE MORE THINGS
- Eyeballs emoji: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is picking a fight with Vice President Vance over whether it is “the highest and best use of our military” for the U.S. to kill cartel members in wake of U.S. strikes on an alleged drug boat that killed 11. “Did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird? … What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial,” Paul posted.
- White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt welcomed right-wing British outlet GB News at a celebration of its DC bureau launch, saying the outlet is “going to be bringing a lot more common sense to the great people of the United Kingdom, and sharing in the values that this administration holds dear: Free speech, no men in women’s sports … secure borders.”
- The Laura Loomer tactic of digging up previous Democratic support among Trump officials is spreading. Fox News Digital reported on Trump’s pick to be representative to the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization, Jeffrey Anderson. He previously donated to Democratic candidates and to Nikki Haley, with one unnamed former Trump official calling him a “liberal sleeper who slipped through the cracks.” Anderson, meanwhile, told Fox l that at “the very least, some of your information is factually incorrect or tendered well out of context.”
WHAT I’M READING
- Chronicles Magazine’s Paul Gottfried: What happened to Reagan’s Three-Legged Stool?
- Nancy Scola in Inc.: Meet the Rave-Throwing Think Tank Shaping the Tech-Right
- Washington Posts’s Karen Tumulty: Trump redefines conservatism, setting up a fight over its future
- Wall Street Journal’s Rachel Wolfe: Divorce Plunged in Kentucky. Equal Custody for Fathers Is a Big Reason Why.
