SENATOR COAL ASH WAS WRONG (AGAIN)

Joe Manchin, who reminds me of every slur I ever heard against West (by God) Virginnyins back in the Navy, turns out to have been wrong in his assessment of what people would do with all that Child Tax Credit cash being showered on them, which was his reason why that had to stop for their own good.

Remember? Ol’ Joe was telling his fellow senators that parents were going to take their child tax credit money and go spend it on drugs?

There’s a study out now, from Washington University in St. Louis, Appalachian State University, and the Brookings Institution, and guess what?

“Overall, we find that families used the CTC to cover routine expenses without reducing their employment. Eligible families experienced improved nutrition, decreased reliance on credit cards and other high-risk financial services, and also made long term educational investments for both parents and children. We find that these changes were especially promising for Black, Hispanic, and other minority families, along with low- and moderate-income families, suggesting that the expanded CTC may be an important tool for addressing both racial financial inequality and a widening income gap in the United States.”

Well, duh. Read the full report. It’s 50 pages, but here are the important parts:

People used the money for three main purposes: They spent it, they saved it, they paid off debt with it.

Spending came in first of course, in the following categories:

Routine expenses (70 percent)

Essential items (58 percent)

More food (56 percent)

Those were the big three. Children’s activities and expenses, health expenses, and improving their homes also ranked in there.

Heroin and Oxycontin are nowhere to be found.

Clearly, the vast majority of people put this money to good use, and Manchin - who turned himself from a moderately unsuccessful carpet store owner into an extremely rich man by becoming a coal dealer, after entering politics (which obviously had nothing to do with his change in fortue) - based his perception on some anecdotal evidence from back home no doubt is true, given the ravages of the oxy pandemic the Sattler Family caused (after paying off people like ol’ Joe), but that “evidence” is hardly representative.

There is, incidentally, a growing body of scholarly research showing that giving people money does not make them not want to work but instead makes them go out and use the resources to help their families or better themselves.

But these toxic assumptions are so hardwired into our political discourse, changing them seems … well, it’d be a good start if actual Democrats made these arguments.

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