President Joe Biden is addressing a joint session of Congress this evening, and experts from The Heritage Foundation are weighing in. Here’s what they have to say.
>>> The Daily Signal is the news and commentary outlet of The Heritage Foundation.
Election Reform
Biden apparently didn’t realize the contradiction inherent in what he said about voting and elections in his speech tonight. He urged Congress to pass H.R. 1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, two bills that would lead to a federal takeover of the election process, destroy the integrity and security of our elections, and give partisan federal bureaucrats and the party in power in Washington, D.C., the ability to manipulate election results.
Yet, he admitted that “more people voted in the last presidential election than ever before in our history—in the middle of one of the worst pandemics ever.” If that is true, why is there any need for any federal legislation at all? That record turnout demonstrates that Americans are having no problems registering and voting, contrary to the false claims of “voter suppression” being made by the sponsors of these two unwise, dangerous bills.
The president said at the beginning of his speech that he would be talking about “crisis and opportunity.” When it comes to our elections and the two ill-advised bills he is supporting, it is clear that Democrats want to manufacture a nonexistent “crisis” about voting in the eyes of the public, which will give fraudsters a greater “opportunity” to cheat when it comes to our elections.
– Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative and senior legal fellow at the Institute for Constitutional Government
Education
Universal Preschool
Biden announced his push for “free” universal preschool for all three- and four-year-old children. In addition to being an massive federal expenditure that is not the appropriate role of Washington, the rigorous research suggests universal preschool programs do not live up to the promises often made by proponents.
Researchers at Vanderbilt University, for example, evaluated Tennessee’s oft-referenced “model” Pre-K program for low-income children found that the program failed to produce any sustained benefits for children and actually had some negative effects.
As the authors of this rigorous randomized control trial evaluation found, “First grade teachers rated the TN-VPK children as less well prepared for school, having poorer work skills in the classrooms, and feeling more negative about school. It is notable that these ratings preceded the downward achievement trend we found for VPK children in second and third grades.”
Indeed, the Biden plan, through structure and delivery, is more likely to resemble—and indeed, bolster—the failing Head Start program, a Lyndon Johnson-era relic that is likely the closest analog to any new or expanded federal preschool program.
In 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services released a?scientifically rigorous evaluation of Head Start, tracking five thousand three- and four-year-old children through the end of third grade. It found that the program had little to no impact on parenting practices. Additionally, it did not have much impact on the cognitive, social-emotional, and health outcomes of participants.
Instead of spending billions in taxpayer money at ineffective federal programs like universal preschool, parents should be empowered with more options for childcare and education through portability of existing dollars.
‘Free’ Community College and Massive New College Subsidies
Biden pitched unprecedented new higher education subsidies, particularly in the community college realm. The administration’s American Families Plan includes an unprecedented $109 billion proposal to finance two years of “free” community college, available to first-time students and “workers wanting to reskill.”
Yet, just 20% of students who begin community college each year complete their program within 150% of the standard time, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Even after factoring in transfers to four-year colleges, the completion for stands at just 34% for community college students.
The proposal seeks to improve these statistics by sending an additional $62 billion to community colleges to increase retention and completion. After decades of lackluster outcomes, more federal spending is unlikely to improve performance.
The plan would also spend more than $80 billion on the federal Pell Grant program (nearly tripling spending which currently stands at $29 billion). This would increase the maximum Pell Grant award by $1,400 per student, from $6,495 to $7,895. (Pell Grants are grants to income-eligible students to offset the cost of tuition and do not have to be repaid.)
It would also spend $46 billion in additional funding on historically black colleges and universities, tribal colleges and universities, and institutions such as Hispanic-serving institutions, Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institutions, and other minority-serving institutions.
Through all of the proposed higher education subsidies, from “free” community college to increases in Pell funding, the Biden administration is pursuing initiatives that would subsidize rising costs, rather than pursuing policies that would actually address the driver of college cost increases.
-Lindsey M. Burke, director of the Center for Education Policy and the Mark A. Kolokotrones Fellow in Education at the Heritage Foundation.
Health Care
Vaccinations
How to encourage Americans to get vaccinated? Educate, not indoctrinate, as Doug Badger and Ed Haislmaier’s outline in their op-ed, “What it Took For A Group of Republicans to Overcome Their Vaccine Hesitancy.”
-Marguerite Bowling, senior communications manager, Institute for Family, Community and Opportunity
Expanding Obamacare
The president called on Congress to expand Obamacare permanently, suggesting it would help lower the costs American families face. As Heritage scholars Ed Haislmaier and Abigail Slagle demonstrate, Obamacare’s costs have doubled thanks to government mandates and other problems.
Pouring more taxpayer money only puts put Band-Aids on broken government program. That is not the right way to lower health costs.
Rather than improve America’s health care, Biden’s plan expands government control of the health care system. His proposals don’t address American’s top health care concerns of reducing health care costs, improving coverage options and expanding access to quality health care.
The American Families Plan would put even more bureaucrats between patients and their doctors. And it would give more money to insurance companies in ways that decrease choices, increase costs, and offer limited access to doctors (as Obamacare currently does).
We need real reforms that remove barriers between patients and doctors. Congress could start by replacing failed government health care programs with one that sends dollars to individuals so they can buy health coverage of their choice, eliminating cost-increasing federal mandates, and directing funds to the states to help the sick.
-Marie Fishpaw, director of the Domestic Policy Studies
Welfare
The American Families Plan undermines welfare reform with new cash payments (referred to as refundable tax credits by Biden) and will discourage work and marriage, thwart upward mobility, and trap families in long-term dependence on government welfare. Disconnecting government benefits from work reverses decades of successful welfare reform. If enacted permanently, this would be the second largest expansion of the welfare state in U.S. history.
Under the plan, a family that chooses not to work at all would receive almost three times as much in new benefits as a median-income working family. The Biden plan adds new cash grants on top of extensive unconditional benefits already provided to non-working single parents. A single mother with two school-aged children would typically receive a combined $59,000 in free welfare, medical and education benefits even if she doesn’t work or prepare for work.
The Biden plan rewards households lacking work and marriage compared with those married and working. For the first time in a quarter century, it increases unconditional cash aid to young teen mothers. This is not an effective or compassionate strategy for reducing long-term poverty or improving the well-being of the poor.
Policymakers who care about helping American families who need financial help should reform—not expand—the existing 89 welfare programs costing $1.1 trillion a year, starting by removing the substantial penalties against marriage within the welfare system.
-Leslie Ford, visiting fellow in Domestic Policy Studies, and Robert Rector, senior research fellow at the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity
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