The GOP war on children

Really? Deny kids health care to further enrich the rich?

Question: Would you take health care away from millions of children with the bad luck to have been born into low-income families so you could give millions of dollars to just one wealthy heir?

This question is not hypothetical. It describes the choice that Republicans in Congress seem to be making as you read this.

The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) is basically a piece of Medicaid for young Americans. It was introduced in 1997 with bipartisan support. Last year, it covered 8.9 million kids. But its funding expired more than two months ago. Republicans keep saying they’ll restore the money, but they keep finding reasons not to. State governments, which administer the program, soon will have to start cutting children off.

The other day Sen. Orrin Hatch, who helped create the program, again insisted that it will be funded — but he did not say when or how. He further declared, “The reason CHIP’s having trouble is that we don’t have money anymore.” Then he voted for an immense tax cut.

One piece of that immense tax cut is a big giveaway to inheritors of large estates. Under current law, a married couple’s estate pays no tax unless it’s worth more than $11 million. This means only a handful of estates — some 5,500, representing less than 0.2 percent of deaths a year — owe any tax at all. The number of taxable estates is also, by the way, well under one one thousandth of the number of children covered by CHIP. But Republicans still consider this tax an unacceptable burden on the rich. The Senate bill would double the exemption to $22 million; the House bill would eliminate the estate tax entirely.

So let’s talk dollars. CHIP covers a lot of children, but children’s health care is relatively cheap compared to care for older Americans. In fiscal 2016, the program cost only $15 billion, a tiny share of the federal budget. Meanwhile, the estate tax is expected to bring in about $20 billion, more than enough to pay for CHIP.

Therefore, Republicans clearly consider it more important to give extra millions to wealthy heirs than to provide health for millions of children — roughly giving each heir enough money to cover 1,000 kids.

Is there any possible defense for this? Republicans claim tax cuts pay for themselves by spurring economic growth, but no serious economists agree — even for things like corporate tax cuts that might have some positive economic effect. Applied to inheritance taxes, this claim is beyond absurd: There is no plausible argument that letting wealthy heirs claim their inheritance tax-free will make the economy boom.

Yes, but aren’t estate taxes a burden on small businesses and family farms? No. Each year only 80 or so small businesses and farms pay any estate tax at all. As for those family farms supposedly broken up to pay estate taxes, remember: Nobody has ever come up with a modern example.

Then there’s Sen. Chuck Grassley claiming that we need to eliminate estate taxes to reward those who don’t spend their money on “booze or women or movies.” Yes, letting the Donald Trump Juniors of the world inherit wealth tax-free is a reward for their fathers’ austere lifestyles.

In the meantime, while cuts don’t pay for themselves, aiding lower-income children saves money in the long run.

Think about it. Children who get adequate care are more likely to be healthier and more productive when they become adults, which means they’ll earn more and pay more in taxes. They’re also less likely to become disabled and need government support. One recent study estimated that the government earns a return of between 2 percent and 7 percent on the money it spends insuring children.

By the way, similar results have been found for the food stamp program: Ensuring adequate nutrition for kids makes them healthier, more productive adults, so in the long run food stamps costs taxpayers little or nothing.

Nevertheless, such benefits aren’t the main reason we should provide all children with health care and enough to eat. Simple decency should be reason enough. Which is why it’s hard to believe that an entire political party would balk at doing the decent thing for millions of kids while rushing to further enrich a few thousand wealthy heirs.

It’s not all that different from embracing a child molester because he’ll vote for tax cuts.