Republicans in the Senate can only dream about Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin flipping parties and giving them control of the chamber again.
After all, former President Donald Trump won only one state last year by a bigger margin than he captured Manchin’s home state of West Virginia. A switch, unlikely as it is, would make sense.
Perhaps GOP senators should really wonder if Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney isn’t ready to flip the other way.
Romney was a near-constant Trump critic and iffy on many policies important to Trump and his fellow Republicans. According to GovTrack.us, a legislative tracking site, Romney is among the most liberal Republican senators.
Fifteen years ago, as governor of Massachusetts, Romney enacted the health insurance system that created the individual mandate to purchase insurance, thus creating the model for Obamacare.
Now, he’s borrowing ideas from former left-wing Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who is now running to be New York City’s mayor.
According to The Hill, Romney on Thursday “unveiled a proposal to provide monthly payments to families with children.”
Romney’s idea is to replace the current per-child tax credit with monthly payments of $350 for children ages 5 and under, and $250 for children ages 6 to 17. Families would be capped at monthly payments of $1,250.
Yang, as a presidential candidate, was the chief proponent of “universal basic income” for adults, or UBI. He proposed the federal government paying each adult American $1,000 a month. For the nuclear family, that would be $24,000 a year.
Romney’s plan would not be as generous but still would offer UBI. For that same family, it would amount to $15,000 a year.
The payments would go to single parents making up to $200,000 a year, while the threshold for married couples would run $400,000.
The Hill reported that Romney would pay for his plan by eliminating programs he claims would be duplicative under his initiative. That includes child and dependent care tax credits as well as temporary assistance for needy families, commonly known as welfare.
“This proposal offers a path toward greater security for America’s families by consolidating the many complicated programs to create a monthly cash benefit for them, without adding to the deficit,” Romney said in a press release.
The Hill also noted, “many Democrats have similarly expressed interest in providing payments to families with children on a monthly basis.” The catch is that they would likely reject Romney’s program cuts.
But they were receptive.
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain tweeted, “Really looking forward to see what @SenatorRomney will propose here — an encouraging sign that bipartisan action to reduce child poverty IS possible.”
Two years ago, Time magazine took a look at Yang’s idea.
It noted that the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated that simply giving people a UBI of $10,000 a year would cost taxpayers $3 trillion a year – or almost three-fourths of the current federal budget.
As Time deadpanned, “The policy might not formally exist yet for a reason. For one, it would be extraordinarily expensive.”
Price has never stopped Democrats before. They simply raise taxes or print more money.
Thus, the issue, with Democrats in charge everywhere you look in Washington, is whether Romney would be strong enough to resist Democrats hijacking his idea, but without his cuts and cost consolidation. Given his history of tweaking conservatives’ noses, that’s not a bad bet on their part.