Kari Lake lays out 'mama bear' policy agenda

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake laid out an aggressive policy agenda Friday that includes using tax incentives to support families.

Lake said her “mama bear” initiative includes using tax credits to support families struggling with the cost of goods and services, and the creation of programs to support families, especially working mothers. That includes a program to help mothers reenter the workforce.

She said those types of policies are needed to address the country’s declining birth rate.

“We've got to start having families so that we have future Americans,” Lake said. “We can't just keep importing populations. We've seen how that's not working in Europe, and it's definitely not working here with this invasion on our border.”

Lake’s agenda also focused heavily on education. She said she supports the creation of a “parent’s bill of rights” that gives families access to curriculum taught in their child’s school and the ability to reject instruction they oppose.

She also wants to implement an Arizona-style school voucher program nationwide.

“We know a lot about that here in Arizona,” Lake said, referring to the school voucher program state lawmakers expanded in 2022. “It works. It works for families. Well, we want to expand that nationwide with tax credits for private or charter schools for families, even for homeschooling and alternative educational programs.”

Lake’s agenda also includes increasing funding for local police departments and expending more resources to secure the border.

“We really want to focus on those neighborhoods where families are living and make sure that those are safe so that our kids can go outside, ride bikes, run around the neighborhood, and mom and dad don't have to worry about their safety,” Lake said.

Much of Lake’s “mama bear” agenda relies on increased federal spending or a potential decrease in revenue in the form of tax breaks for eligible families.

Lake suggested paying for these programs by cutting what she calls wasteful spending.

That includes the use of federal money to pay for transgender health care for military members, she said.

However, that makes up a fraction of the military’s budget, accounting for about $8 million of its $50 billion health-care budget between 2016 and 2019, according to the Department of Defense.

For comparison, the expanded child tax credit passed during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 – which increased the tax credit amount to up to $3,600 per child and allowed families to receive half the credit in the form of monthly payments – cost around $94 billion.

Lake also said she wanted to “stop paying for people to come over illegally and pay for their housing and their EBT cards with thousands of dollars.”

She added, “That's going to save us hundreds of millions of dollars.”

According to FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security’s budget includes $641 million this year to help local governments and nonprofit organizations to provide housing and services to noncitizen migrants in their communities released from DHS custody.

The federal government is not giving migrants debit cards loaded with thousands of dollars, according to Politifact. New York City has a program that provides preloaded debit cards to migrant families to pay for things like food.