There are a number of sensible steps our legislature could take to create the solid foundation that New Hampshire parents deserve for ourselves, our families and our children. It is not a long list— affordable healthcare, childcare, housing, equitable statewide funding of our public schools, paid family and medical leave, paid maternal and paternal leave, and sustained resources for parents to raise their disabled children to their fullest potential.

The benefits of these steps can be seen in all the countries where they have been enacted as standard elements of a government devoted to the public good. Creating a state government that provided these supports would be a clear political statement of respect for all that New Hampshire parents contribute every day to the present and future health of our state.

Instead, New Hampshire parents are harmed on a daily basis by the failure of our legislature to demonstrate this respect. Republican resistance causes this harm. Their refusal rests on two unyielding Republican convictions. New Hampshire can’t afford these measures and parents will fall into dependent idleness by abusing any kind of government support.

Regardless of their words, Republican legislative actions show their priorities. Business comes first, government comes last, and everyone else will somehow get by on their own.

Private property and individual liberties are more important than the public good. Local control is best except when Republicans don’t like the results. The state’s most recent budget bills were enacted in 2019. They restored education grants that had been withheld, delivered new funds to struggling schools, restored frozen revenue sharing with towns in the amount of $40 million, increased state funding for all-day kindergarten, stopped increasing state university tuition levels, and raised Medicaid reimbursement rates to expand the pool of practitioners who could afford to provide services.

During a time of business vitality and low unemployment, Governor Sununu refused to support the budget because it reduced the business tax cuts that were his highest priority. He opposed the budget for four months, effectively holding parents, local governments and school districts hostage to his political priority.

He insisted that the very economic vitality he claimed as a Republican success was too fragile to afford taxes that respected all the countless ways parents supported those businesses. The governor and Republicans in the legislature went on to decimate every successful House bill that respected the essential labor of New Hampshire parents.

This dismissal of the legitimate needs of our parents has carried on into the current biennium with a vengeance. Parents can no longer even be certain that the traditional budget bills are really about the budget. Republicans are now using them to legislate in secret. And this is no small thing for parents in particular.

The many pages of the budget now hide unrelated bills that profoundly affect them. Bills to outlaw what schools and businesses can teach or to marginalize and criminalize private healthcare decisions about having children are just two examples of the disturbing reach Republicans are seeking into decisions that belong to parents.

The portions of the budget bills that actually relate to our state finances reveal the recurring Republican insistence that our state simply can’t afford the existing level of public services, let alone consider expanding them. They insist that New Hampshire doesn’t have the money and fly in the face of years of nationwide data placing our state among the wealthiest in the country. This state-level insistence exactly repeats the refrain of Congressional Republicans.

Republicans in Washington and Concord protect the profits of businesses and the gains of our wealthier citizens at the expense of countless measures that would directly support parents and their families. The pandemic has revealed where this selfishness takes us.

Republicans fought to limit the pandemic relief benefits to small businesses and working parents that were distributed in the last nine months of 2020. They refused to support stronger pandemic relief protecting parents, families, homeowners, renters and businesses in 2021. They are now aggressively opposing legislation that would specifically benefit parents, families and their children.

It’s not surprising that Congressional Republicans insist that we simply don’t have the money to afford relief to parents. They claim that it cost the enormous and irresponsible sum of $267 billion to provide relief benefits to our citizens. Those benefits were distributed to 159 million Americans at an average of $1,680 per person to help weather the burdens of the pandemic

Meanwhile, 651 billionaire citizens banked $1.5 trillion dollars in pandemic profits during the same nine months of 2020. That’s an average of $1.5 billion in profit for each billionaire to help them weather their burdens. Millions upon millions of American citizens received about $1,500 per person, while 651 American billionaires received a million times more.

The Republican Party insists our nation can’t afford what parents need to ensure that their children and families flourish in the wealthiest nation on earth. The harsh truth is that parents can’t afford the Republican Party

(David Coursin lives in Northwood.)