Charles Bruner served in the Iowa legislature from 1978 to 1990 and was founding director of the Child and Family Policy Center from 1989 through 2016. For the last six years, he headed a Health Equity and Young Children initiative focusing on primary child health care for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The movie came first (the live debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump), but I would also urge people to read the book—that is, the full CNN debate transcript.
This may do little to change the immediate impact of the presidential debate on polling and public impressions of the two candidates’ fitness, but it does tell a different story of what they said, and what they would do in office.
There was even a question about child care, as well as one about inflation, which spoke to the financial needs of American households struggling to balance their bread-winning and caregiving roles for themselves and their members.
On that point, Biden did speak to his “families, children, and caregiving agenda,” which includes expanding the child tax credit, advancing paid family and sick leave, making child care more available, providing in-home services for seniors and those with disabilities, and looking out for the 95 percent of American households making less than $400,000 per year.
Biden also emphasized financing those investments by making sure billionaires pay their fair share, rolling back some of the tax cuts for the wealthy, adopted as part of Trump’s Tax Cut and Jobs Act.
Most of Trump’s remarks were simply bragging about how great things were under his administration and how horrible things are under Biden’s administration—often with wild and false assertions. And Biden started almost every response by saying that what Trump said was untrue and had been debunked.
We will see if the debate and its aftermath did irreparable damage to Biden’s candidacy. At the same time, however, we need to get out a message that speaks to the real and profound differences between the Trump-Republican and Biden-Democratic agendas for our country.
In particular, they offer profoundly different visions of what kind of American families the government should recognize and support. For that, I would love to see a debate between spokespersons for MomsRising and Moms for Liberty, as well as debates involving Iowa candidates for Congress and the state legislature.
Ultimately, which candidates voters elect will determine how our state and federal governments handle these foundational societal issues.
Top image was created by Charles Bruner using open AI.
3 Comments
This is the garbled nonsense we just heard
“We’d be able to right – wipe out his debt. We’d be able to help make sure that – all those things we need to do, childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our healthcare system, making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the COVID – excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with.
Look, if – we finally beat Medicare.
TAPPER: Thank you, President Biden.”
Congrats to the CNN transcriptors. Biden was not always articulate, and the transcript makes him look smarter than he was last night.
Karl M Fri 28 Jun 10:08 PM
No title
Nearly two years ago (June 10, 2022), President Joe Biden launched the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, a commitment by leaders from 20 nations from across the entire Western Hemisphere “to strengthen national, regional, and hemispheric efforts to create the conditions for safe, orderly, humane, and regular migration and to strengthen frameworks for international protection and cooperation.”
The Los Angles Declaration (as it is called) recognizes the root causes of people leaving their home country in search of security and a safe way to live. This initiative is above and beyond policies that limit the number of asylum seekers, place workers with sponsors, block state-level “search and return” policies, or provide more resources for border patrol and immigrant processing.
We, the Heads of State and Government of the Argentine Republic, Barbados, Belize, the Federative Republic of Brazil, Canada, the Republic of Chile, the Republic of Colombia, the Republic of Costa Rica, the Republic of Ecuador, the Republic of El Salvador, the Republic of Guatemala, Co‑operative Republic of Guyana, the Republic of Haiti, the Republic of Honduras, Jamaica, the United Mexican States, the Republic of Panama, the Republic of Paraguay, the Republic of Peru, the United States of America, and the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, gathered in Los Angeles on the margins of the Ninth Summit of the Americas, reiterate our will to strengthen national, regional, and hemispheric efforts to create the conditions for safe, orderly, humane, and regular migration and to strengthen frameworks for international protection and cooperation.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/05/07/fact-sheet-third-ministerial-meeting-on-the-los-angeles-declarationon-migration-and-protection-in-guatemala/#:~:text=The%20Los%20Angeles%20Declaration%20is,(3)%20strengthening%20humane%20enforcement.
Gerald Ott Sat 29 Jun 8:50 AM
@Mr. Ott
There cannot be two Biden, the one who wrote the coherent yet daring immigration policy document you cite, and the one who can barely utter two sentences that make sense (as seen in the debate).
It’s time to acknowledge that our current President is a shadow of himself, barely able to read from a prompter sentences crafted by whomever is actually governing.
Karl M Sat 29 Jun 5:56 PM