Parents & ‘cat ladies’ both have a stake in America’s fiscal future

There is no greater threat to the economic survival of ordinary Americans—with or without children—than the federal debt.

If you are at all a follower of political news, you’re aware of the kerfuffle around GOP Vice Presidential nominee J.D. Vance’s 2022 views on parenthood:

We are effectively run in this country…by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. It’s just a basic fact—you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC—the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a stake in it?

J.D. is getting a lot of flak for the critical things he has said about “childless sociopaths” during his brief political career. In his defense, a few days ago, he argued that his comments were “sarcastic” and “not about criticizing people who for various reasons don’t have kids.” When I worked on presidential campaigns, an oft-repeated adage was “if you’re explaining, you’re losing.”

One thing I try to do in order to build bridges with people of differing views is to ask: what is the strongest case for the other person’s argument? Is there a meritorious point hiding behind the caustic rhetoric?

In J.D.’s case, I think there is one. I can relate to J.D.’s claim that fatherhood has made him more passionate about fighting for America’s future. It has done that for me. I launched FREOPP in 2016, days before my first child was born, because I wanted my kids—and those of all Americans—to benefit from the kinds of opportunities that I had growing up. Decades of government-erected barriers have put those opportunities in jeopardy.

The problem is that J.D.’s views on public policy have become less future-oriented since he became a parent.

The greatest threat to our future is the federal debt

The childless J.D. Vance of the 2010s, the one who wrote Hillbilly Elegy, was a serious thinker who devoted himself to America’s thorniest long-term problems. 2010s J.D. decried those who trafficked in the “cultural heroin” of simplistic non-solutions to the challenges of downtrodden communities. 2010s J.D. admired Paul Ryan’s efforts to reform Medicare and Social Security, understanding that “the real inequality in this country is not between rich and poor in 2011, but between the middle class of 2011 and the middle class of the future.”

2010s J.D. was right. There is no greater threat to the economic survival of ordinary Americans than the dangerously large and rising federal debt. The Congressional Budget Office projects that by 2044, the debt will exceed 139% of GDP, far exceeding the peak achieved during World War II. Believe it or not, the CBO’s projections are wildly optimistic, as they presume that the economy will grow at a robust 3.6 percent annually, forever. If GDP merely grows at 3.0% instead of 3.6% over time, and interest rates increase by only 0.05% a year above the CBO’s baseline, the debt-to-GDP ratio will reach 288% in 2044, and 635% in 2054: $441 trillion.

This is not a theoretical exercise. America may be an exceptional nation, but it is not immune to the laws of economics. Within the next 20 years, if we do not change course, we are nearly certain to have a catastrophic economic crisis fueled by 20% interest rates, 30% inflation, or worse. As FREOPP’s Jackson Mejia and Jon Hartley have shown, high inflation disproportionately harms the poor. 

J.D. has expressed admiration of FREOPP’s health care work in the past, and shares our view that entitlement reform is not viable unless it protects vulnerable populations and improves affordability for low earners. 

At FREOPP, we further argue that the right kind of free-market reforms are the best way to make health care and other services universally affordable. This isn’t just true of health care but of housing, energy, education, and numerous other things. 

Economic freedom expands opportunity

Since 2016, I’d argue that no institution has done more than FREOPP to marshal economic freedom and individual liberty to expand opportunity to those who least have it today. Over 120 million Americans have benefited from our efforts to reopen schools during the pandemic; to reduce drug prices for seniors; to improve health care for veterans; and to help parents and students identify cost-effective colleges.

There is both promise and uncertainty to J.D. Vance’s ascent. On the plus side, J.D. elevates many of the concerns that FREOPP has been raising since 2016: how large corporations rig the system to serve themselves at the expense of consumers and competitors; the rising cost of essential goods and services; and the importance of both parties focusing on how to help Americans who are struggling.

On the minus side, 2020s J.D.—the one with young children—appears to have abandoned his interest in reducing the federal debt. “The idea that you need to mess with Social Security and Medicare to get to a long-term fiscal sanity picture…I don’t think that that’s right,” he told Larry Kudlow on Fox Business in January 2024.

2020s J.D. has even falsely accused entitlement reformers of selling out elderly Americans to help random foreigners. “They call it ‘entitlement reform,’ but of course what they’re saying is that they want to cut Social Security for the people who paid into it for a generation so that we can send more money to Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine.” This is the kind of claim that 2010s J.D. might have called “fiscal heroin.”

I take J.D. at his word that newfound opposition to entitlement reform is sincere, and that it has nothing to do with political considerations. But it’s ironic that around the very time J.D. began to have children, his view of fiscal policy went from being focused on the future to being unconcerned with it. 

Indeed, J.D. could easily have cribbed his rhetorical opposition to Medicare and Social Security reform from the policy platforms of Kamala Harris and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. On that score, J.D. doesn’t merely owe the “childless cat ladies” of the Democratic Party an apology. He owes them royalties.

My hope for J.D. is that, regardless of whether he wins or loses in November, his thinking continues to evolve, and that he rediscovers his concern for the devastating consequences of a debt crisis upon economically vulnerable Americans. 

J.D.’s nomination for the Vice Presidency shows why FREOPP’s mission is so essential. Over the next four years, many of the policy debates we have in this country will turn on the question of whether economic freedom or government micromanagement will do more to help our compatriots achieve the American dream. How we tame the federal debt is the most important of these debates.

The stronger FREOPP is, the stronger will be the pro-liberty side. With your support, our scholars will continue to generate new ideas to marshal freedom to expand opportunity for all.