Trump's Family Policy

I can tell reading a lot of these responses on the internet concerning Trump's family policy speech tonight that quite a few get it. But, being the anti-welfare guy that I am, I get some of the consternation too.

What those who are concerned need to recognize is that these policy proposals are directly in opposition to the whole point of welfare. The left has been pushing welfare as a means of, not only hooking voters by demographic, but mainly to get people hooked onto State dependence.

We can argue all day about “where the money comes from”, or if it is truly welfare or not (I say it is not). But you have to look at the goal here. It isn’t the leftist goal of keeping people dependent on the State. The goal is to get people to work. To make it easier for people to stay in the work force. And to help out working families and keep them as working families.


Ultimately that is better (and cheaper) than folks being on actual welfare. I find it funny that some people are upset about a 6-week paid maternity leave when the alternative might be a mother losing her job and then going on the dole…for far longer than 6 weeks. Which is cheaper? Hmm?

Look, Trump wants to put people back to work. But y’all need to realize something. There are entire generations of people who have lived in the welfare system. Now some are just content to be that way, and that’s a whole other problem. But some want out. They want to get a job. But the way the system is now actually punishes people for trying, using taxes and loss of certain benefits, unless they hit an escape trajectory by getting a well-paying job. It shouldn’t be that way. But it is by design.

These policies are a step in the right direction. They remove the pressure against mothers getting a job by trying to help cover childcare expenses. And they help mothers avoid losing a job because they are having a baby. It also to an extent tries to keep families together. What is the #1 reason why families split (besides the usual infidelity/incompatibility)? Financial reasons. This isn’t going to solve it completely, obviously, but it helps. Financial pressure, especially when kids are involved, can drive a lot of couples to the brink.

It is also interesting that Trump added care of the elderly to this. Taking care of parents used to be a socially-accepted responsibility of their children. Did society just suddenly stop caring about their parents? No. They just couldn’t afford it anymore. This part of his plans helps to bring that back. It’s something we all should do. It’s something most of us want to do. Now we can more easily afford it under his plan.

Look, this isn’t a “welfare” plan, not in the traditional sense. It is a pro-family plan and a pro-jobs plan. He wants to bring back jobs. He also wants to get Americans into those jobs. And that means finding ways to pry people out of the welfare ditch they’ve been pushed into by decades of Globalist policy making.

The man is a strategic thinker. He doesn’t work off of a checklist of “conservative principles”. He focuses on a goal and he thinks outside of ideology to find solutions that might work. Give it a chance. Consider his overall goals and see how this fits just as well as any of his other policies do. Everything he proposes fits together like pieces of a puzzle. All of the planks in his platform overlap: National security and Economic security. Those are the goal. The untapped potential of the American People can make that goal happen, and the goal protects the untapped potential of the American People.

It all fits together nicely. America first, not ideology first.