House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is once again fighting for his political life as he tries to sell the debt ceiling deal that has many Republicans furious. It’s a moment that demands his very best talking points, and as one of them, he’s chosen to suggest that the deal would promote child labor.
We know this is a scripted talking point not just because it’s coming out of Kevin McCarthy’s mouth but because he said virtually the same words twice on Tuesday.
“In this family we may have a child, able-bodied, not married, no kids, but he’s sitting on the couch collecting welfare,” McCarthy said on Fox News Tuesday morning. “We’re going to put work requirements on that individual so he’s going to have work requirements, he’s going to get a job.”
Speaking to a group of reporters Tuesday afternoon, it was, “We might have a child that has no job, no dependents, but sitting on the couch. We’re going to encourage that person to get a job and have to go to work, which gives them worth and value.”
If you give McCarthy the benefit of the doubt, he may be talking about a person who has reached legal adulthood and is still living with their parents, referring to that person’s social role as the child of the head of the household they live in. Given that Republican lawmakers in several states are pushing to weaken child labor laws, though, with proposals such as allowing 14- and 15-year-olds to work later on school nights than federal law allows or to serve alcohol in bars, it’s not clear how much benefit of the doubt McCarthy deserves. If he’s not literally talking about work requirements for children here, his party is only a couple steps away from doing just that.
Even if we assume that McCarthy is speaking about an adult who lives with their parents, though, what he’s saying is misleading at best. The deal raises the age to which work requirements for so-called able-bodied adults without children apply, from 49 to 54. In the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, work requirements already apply to able-bodied adults aged 18 to 49 who don’t have children. Unless they are working or are in a qualified training program 80 hours per month, they can only get SNAP benefits for three months in a three-year period. At Republican insistence, this deal raises that age to 54. So the only “child” who is sitting on their parents’ couch affected by this change in the work requirements is at least 50 years old.
McCarthy is not renowned for his policy expertise, but he and the person who drafted this talking point for him surely know that the image he’s summoning up—whether it’s of a 15-year-old working extra hours on a school night or a 24-year-old booted off his parents’ couch into the workplace—is not an accurate reflection of what this deal would do.
In reality, the new work requirements in this bill will affect people aged 50 to 54, an age group in which more than 40% of low-income people report significant health problems that could affect their ability to work the kind of jobs available to them. We’re talking about people who may have already spent most of their adult lives in jobs that have broken down their health, for whom working at Walmart or Home Depot or in an Amazon warehouse would be physically unsustainable. Republicans begrudge them an average of $8 a day in food assistance—and in fact wanted to go much further with the new work requirements.
Many low-wage jobs in the United States are also not conducive to meeting work requirements, because they offer unstable, unpredictable work hours that may make it difficult to meet a strict 20-hour-a-week requirement, while lack of time off may make it difficult for people with health problems to keep their jobs. This is a cruel policy that applies specifically to older adults, and McCarthy is trying to sell it by invoking an entirely different image of who will be affected.
It’s a weird choice, too, because when it comes to getting votes from the far right fringe of his own party, McCarthy might as well lean into the image of forcing people in their 50s to power through the pains in their backs and knees and get back into the warehouses. You know the Freedom Caucus would eat that stuff up.
We speak with Anderson Clayton, the 25-year-old chair of North Carolina’s Democratic Party. Clayton has a big-picture plan for 2024, and explains the granular changes needed to get out the vote on college campuses and in the rural communities of the Tar Heel State.
