MAGA’s Ugly Budget at Odds with Its Creepy Pronatalism

Republicans’ legislation hurts kids and makes child-rearing more expensive

Echoing past fascist regimes and current autocracies, the MAGA crowd has latched onto the creepy idea of promoting “fertility.” That is, they want the government to promote childbirth and bigger families. But this is pronatalism with a twist—a highly unsubtle effort to protect “Western civilization.” Bluntly, they want more White people to counteract the utterly hysterical, baseless notion that nonwhites are “replacing” them. This absurd movement is not just occurring in the United States. “Around the world, far-right leaders have campaigned on platforms to roll back abortion rights, restrict immigration, and boost the number of native-born children.”

Vice President JD Vance pushed this philosophy during the campaign. But this ugly strain of eugenics has deep roots, both here and globally. For the MAGA movement, this movement combines a zeal to dominate women’s choices (return to the home, abolish abortion), prevent the “poisoning of our blood” (straight out of the Great Replacement theory), and White Christian nationalism.

This is all about increasing the “right kind of people,” as Robin Abcarian observes. “[T]hat is precisely the message emanating from a White House in thrall to the Heritage Foundation’s ‘pro-family’ Project 2025, and from quirky billionaire Elon Musk, who spreads his seed in a compulsive quest to reverse the world’s declining birth rate.”

The aim here is overtly racist and misogynistic (women have value only as baby machines, the rest are psychotic “cat ladies”). But its advocates are clueless (or pretend to be) about the actual reasons for declining birth rates. They are even more oblivious about the impact of MAGA’s own policies on parents’ decision-making.

A new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds a small percentage of Americans share the pronatalist obsession with birthrates. “The survey finds that only about 3 in 10 Americans say declining birth rates are a ‘major problem’ in the U.S., and just 12% say that encouraging families to have more children should be ‘a high priority’ for the federal government.” In fact, a solid majority now opposes forced birth laws banning abortion.

Instead, Americans are rightfully concerned about the cost of childcare. A strong plurality favors government support for childcare (including 56% of independents), 2/3 favor mandated paid leave for parents of newborns, and 64% favor free or low-cost childcare for preschool-age children.

The ugly reconciliation legislation only makes matters worse for families and couples contemplating having children. Cuts in food stamps, Medicaid, energy subsidies, and the Department of Education will all hit families with children. “Low-income children and families would be among the groups hit hardest by Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” NPR reports. “While the bill would be a boon to wealthy Americans, it would scale back resources for the nation's poorest households, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) warned in a recent letter to lawmakers.” With about 37 million children enrolled in either Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), new paperwork and work requirements for parents with children over the age of 14 will strip many of healthcare and promote a new generation of latchkey kids.

The largest cut in SNAP history is projected to eliminate millions of kids from food support, including free lunch programs. New rules for the Earned Income Tax Credit will also hit poorer families with a requirement that “they go through an onerous precertification process for their children before being able to claim the credit.” While the Child Tax Credit will increase to $2500, “households have to earn a certain amount of income to be eligible for the full credit.” Making it harder to receive benefits is a feature, not a bug, of this and other programs that are supposed to help children.

For families who can barely afford coverage through the Affordable Care Act exchanges, Republicans’ legislation is a disaster. A slew of new documentation and shorter enrollment periods will trip up many who would otherwise qualify for the subsidies. In failing to extend the “more generous premium subsidies put in place during the Covid pandemic,” Republicans seem bent on allowing those to expire, “resulting in premiums rising by an average of 75% next year, according to KFF.”

The Trump regime has also been on a crusade to burden students and their families. From changing Pell Grant eligibility to redesigning student loan repayment plans (e.g., phasing out income-driven repayment plans) to blocking $7B in grant programs designed to support “after-school and summer learning, English language learning, and professional development for teachers,” the Trump gang seem bent on making education more expensive and educational outcomes worse.

Regarding the freeze in $7B funding, Jodi Grant, head of the Afterschool Alliance explains the anticipated impact on approximately 10,000 facilities:

These tend to be sites that have low-income communities. As I said, they are red, purple, and blue.

And for many of them, this is their source of funding for after-school. So, they will — they’re doing everything they can to scrimp and save and see if they can keep their doors open a few extra days, a few extra weeks. But I think many of them are in grave danger of shutting down.

And I think the worst-hit communities are going to be rural communities in smaller states, and, of course, the parents, because these programs are an absolute lifeline for working parents and their employers when parents start struggling with being able to go to work because their kids have nowhere to be.

In their zeal to demonize government, scrounge around for money to partially pay for giant tax cuts for the wealthy, and castigate recipients as moochers, cheats, and undocumented immigrants (the latter do not qualify anyway), MAGA Republicans are punishing children and families. As such, they are directly undercutting their vaunted goal to encourage families to have more kids.

When policies impoverish, starve, under-educate, and deny healthcare to children, do they genuinely envision that people will want to have more children? Their scheme is as inhumane as it is illogical. Children will be the victims.