Fox Business Panel Blasts Trump’s ‘Perverse’ $5,000 Baby Bonus Plan: ‘Feels Like a Biden-Kamala Era Stimmy’
A Trump administration proposal to offer $5,000 baby bonuses to new mothers did not get much love on a Fox Business panel on Thursday, with the hosts blasting it as “perverse” and something you’d expect to see from the last administration.
The current administration is currently mulling the idea of offering $5000 to new mothers, and Trump called it a “good idea” when asked about it at the White House.
On Thursday’s The Big Money Show, Dagen McDowell called the plan “completely unnecessary,” arguing childbirth is already incentivized through Medicaid, state programs, the child tax credit, and more.
“$5,000 as a baby bonus won’t get anyone who is on the fence about starting a family to start a family,” she said.
Hedge fund manager Jonathan Hoenig questioned why the birth rate is of such concern for the president and his advisor Elon Musk, who often cites birth rates as a major issue.
“We used to criticize giving welfare to people to have children who couldn’t afford otherwise to have it. What I don’t understand is this call’s Elon keeps alluding to. He’s doing his best to avoid the collapse, having many different children with many different mothers, but the United States has basically doubled the population you had 50 or 60 years ago,” Hoenig said.
Taylor Riggs joked that the bonuses should be retroactive for people who are already parents. She argued the program would create a “perverse incentive” for people have children.
“It creates a perverse incentive to have children because you want a check without thinking through the long-term costs which is bigger than $5,000,” she said, adding that the government should be working towards creating better incentives for IVF and surrogacy.
Jackie DeAngelis torched the plan, saying it sounds like something that would be better suited to come out of former President Joe Biden’s administration.
“I don’t agree with it. I call them like I see them. This feel like a Biden-Kamala era stimmy to get people to do what you want them to do. If we are concerned about population I understand that,” she said. “There are other ways you brought up that we can address this issue. What concerns me more is the quality of education, math scores, the medicaid babies, how they compete with kids from China.”
Brian Brenberg later praised the administration to putting a focus on families, but agreed that having children would be better incentivized other ways after Dagen argued that the administration should focus on creating better financial realities for young men to promote marriage and children earlier.
“What the research on this finds is monetary incentives for fertility don’t really work,” Brenberg said, “but monetary and non-monetary incentives for marriage and family formation actually do work.”
Watch above via Fox Business.
