Senators Graham, Scott failed to help South Carolina’s most vulnerable citizens

Though West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin generates most of the national headlines because he bucks his party, it’s because of men like Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott poor children in South Carolina will have harder lives this year.

Senators Graham and Scott are among the primary reasons one of the most efficient and effective child poverty-fighting tools of the modern era has expired.

It’s cruel. It’s unnecessary. But it’s par for the course for Graham, Scott and the rest of the South Carolina GOP delegation.

Nearly one million poor kids in South Carolina will no longer have a lifeline that helped pull them out of poverty even as poor and working-class families are finding it hard to put food on the table during a pandemic doesn’t seem to want to end.

The expanded child tax credits became law in July of last year as part of efforts to help the country cope with COVID-19. Struggling families in South Carolina received about $433 a month, which stabilized teetering households.

One of the recipients told researcher Elizabeth Adams of the University of South Carolina the policy changed their lives this way: “Our daughter is now able to do some after-school programs. I think for us, as parents, it lowered our stress, because she was able to do this program. It really helped her to have a purpose. She was able to find a stress relief and get the frustrations out and a healthier way.”

The tax credits were proposed by Democrats, passed by Democrats and made law by President Joe Biden.

Not one Republican – not Graham, not Scott, not Myrtle Beach’s Rep. Tom Rice, not a single elected Republican from South Carolina – voted to help. Those Republicans stood steadfast against every attempt to ensure the payments would continue into 2022 and maybe beyond.

They did not care it would mean more hungry children in the state they supposedly represent. It should be to their shame, but instead they see such banal cruelty as politically beneficial.

Graham has proven himself untrustworthy, changing the rules about Supreme Court nominations then changing them right back after saying he wouldn’t, opposing Donald Trump, then fully supporting him, then renouncing the former president after the Jan. 6 insurrection, but now supporting him again.

No one should expect him to put the well being of poor families above his own.

Rice believes his best shot at fending off primary challengers is to “fight” Democrats as much as possible, even if that means standing in the way of policies proven to help at-risk children.

Scott is the self-styled conscience of the Republican Party, the one who frequently reminds audiences about his tough upbringing, claiming he is the fulfillment of the American dream.

In his youth, Scott was very much like the kids who had been benefiting from the extended tax credits – and yet as a powerful adult he didn’t lift a finger to advocate for them.

They try to deflect from what their political calculations mean with talk of high inflation and “too much” government spending.

But that’s all it is; deflection.

Poor people aren’t the cause of high inflation; a once-in-a-century pandemic is.

And those Republicans weren’t overly concerned about government spending and rising deficits when they were cutting taxes for the wealthy during the Trump era.

The worst part is that too few poor people vote consistently while those in the middle class who disdain poor people do, making it harder to hold our elected officials to account.

That’s why there’s no end in sight to this kind of inhumanity.

Issac Bailey is a columnist for The Sun News.