Here’s a guessing game for the Mid-term Election. Which party has drafted the following legislation– Republican or Democrat?

H.R. 2714, Working Families Childcare Access Act  Increases the amount families are able to save in Dependent Care FSAs and allows any unused money to be carried over to the next year

H.R. 19, Lower Costs, More Cures Act Lowers the cost of prescriptions for all Americans, protects access to new cures, caps out of pocket costs for seniors, lowers how much families pay for insulin, and brings generic drugs to market faster

H.R. 5224, Preventing Overdoses and Saving Lives Act Creates a grant program that allows states to conduct research on the opioid crisis, create a strategic plan on their response, and implement co-prescribing in their jurisdiction.

H.R. 677, JUSTICE Act   Improves and reforms policing practices, accountability and transparency

If you said “Democrats,” I gotcha. This is the platform of a Republican sub-group called the “Suburban Caucus.”   You can find the details of these proposed bills at

https://wagner.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/wagner.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/Suburban%20Caucus%20Spring%202022%20Platform.pdf

The bills overwhelmingly support the so-called “safety net” of medical and social programs, the kind that Democrats, even the much-maligned Green New Deal, has tried to push through Congress under the Biden administration. They are designed to appeal to the suburban women who left the Party in droves in the last election (2020).

Is the Suburban Caucus a wolf in sheep’s clothing? It tries to show women that Republicans care with bills named “Working families childcare access” and “Lower Costs, More Cures” and dramatically a “Justice Act,” which improves and reforms policing practices.  From the Party which insists that “Blue Lives Matter” in response to the slogan “Black Lives Matter”?

The Suburban Caucus was founded by our own Ann Wagner in the Spring, 2022 to bring suburban women back into the Republican fold.  Indeed Rep. Wagner has a strong interest in this constituency, since they control the ballot in West County, and they have begun to drift leftward, or at least out of the Donald Trump orbit. Her Congressional representation is considered one of the most vulnerable Republican seats by the national party.

The above list of bills offered by Republicans has a strong socialist ring with the urgent support of medical expenses, the subsidizing of childcare, and the professional reform of policing. It could be an expensive list of reforms if Republicans were to bring it to the table.  Not to mention a controversial list among the more conservative Congressional representatives in the south and upper midwest. These have the sound of fruitful progressivism.

But the good news for suburban women ends with the woman’s right to choose. Nothing in the platform offers physical or mental health costs for women in difficult pregnancies, from rape, incest or the health of the fetus. This is where the Suburban Caucus draws the line.  Ann Wagner’s website bluntly states, “I believe that life from conception to natural death is our greatest gift–and a gift that our country far too often takes for granted.”

As refreshing as the non-partisan platform of the Suburban Caucus is, it does not address the most timely issue of women’s health and the right to choose. Among the issues on Ann Wagner’s website, this is the most uncompromising position she takes. In the final analysis, how do suburban women evaluate her representation in Congress?

Do you vote for the ideals of the Suburban Caucus or for the rights of women to control their bodies? No election of recent memory has laid out that choice more starkly.