Republicans have apparently taken to heart Napoleon Bonaparte’s famous advice: “Never interrupt your opponent when they’re making a mistake.”
Over the last year and a half, Democrats have implemented a disastrous foreign policy, ruined the economy, and embraced an extremely unpopular “woke” agenda on cultural issues. There’s no doubt that’s enough to give the GOP a big win in 2022. But even so, Republicans will still have to deliver a compelling answer to an important question: What are we for?
While some GOP leaders have tried to ignore the question entirely, Congressman Jim Banks has been busy working to answer it. Last year, he made headlines when he wrote a memo to Republican leadership urging a policy shift toward becoming the party of the working class.
Now, Banks is pressing on even further. Just this week, the Republican Study Committee (RSC), which is chaired by Banks, released a new budget plan designed to fight inflation and put Americans first. It permanently adjusts the tax code to lower rates for working families, allowing parents to make the most of their hard work and reinvest in their households. It would create a Universal Savings Account to save some family investments from capital gains tax, re-incentivizing parents to fruitfully invest in their children’s futures. And it would end marriage tax penalties that discourage the formation of families, especially for younger adults.
While the RSC budget is naturally a broad, all-encompassing document that is friendly to families in certain elements, Rep. Banks and his team know that families are the heartbeat of America, and they’ve committed themselves to a family-oriented agenda that could ensure that the future of our nation is strong, if only her leaders will back it.
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That’s why they recently published a streamlined, pro-family guideline to give the Republican Party a roadmap for their approach to all-important cultural issues. Dubbed the Family Policy Initiative, the plan is based around ten pillars which articulate natural truths about the family and outline measures in which the government can and should support familial prosperity.
The pillars promote policies recognizing that parents, not government officials, have the best interests of their children at heart and maintain the right to make the final decision in cases regarding their children’s welfare. They promote the growth of families by eliminating oppressive fiscal policies, such as marriage penalties in tax policy, that discourage family formation. And they recognize the importance of giving parents control over their children’s education dollars and access to school curricula so that parents are free to make the right choices for their children’s formation.
Going forward, the RSC will work to write policies that, if passed, will cement these pillars into our political institutions, entrenching the well-being of American families into the very framework of our federal law.
This is an absolutely necessary step if the United States hopes to have a political future. As it stands, American families are holding on by a thread, and at every turn they are seemingly faced with another politician, expert, or maligned agenda seeking to undermine them even further.
Families deserve the stability of home-ownership rather than the uncertainty of perpetual rent. Families deserve an economy that supports them on one income should they choose to have one parent stay at home to raise their children. Families deserve to rest easy in the knowledge that their children are not at risk of political indoctrination whenever they go to school, nor are their children’s mental health crises being deliberately hidden from them by temporary caretakers.
The time is ripe for elected officials to take an active role in repairing the crumbling foundation of the country. The Left’s solution is to offer parents government-run childcare and push more women into the workforce. Within schools, leftists weaken the bonds of trust between parents and children by creating false “safe spaces” and encouraging kids to adopt different identities that are kept secret from parents. Such actions don’t bring families together; they’re designed to pull them apart.
If the American experiment is to survive, the family must be restored. That is why the family needs to be the platform of the Republican Party going forward. Without the family, there will be no free nation to lead–only sad, isolated individuals waiting for their welfare checks to be signed at the whim of the tyrants in power.
Thankfully, Rep. Banks and his fellow RSC members appear to understand the challenge at hand. We hope the rest of the party follows their lead and embraces the fight.
Sandra Kirby serves as government affairs manager for American Principles Project.
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