J.D. Vance broke off talks on bipartisan childbirth plan amid VP search (2024)

The break in the talks — at least for now — captures the broader puzzle facing the man who is suddenly the second-most important figure in the Republican Party. In his brief time in the Senate, Vance indicated a vision for a more active role for the government in GOP policymaking on everything from taxes to antitrust. Vance’s allies characterize those proposals as in line with Trump’s priorities, but some of the Ohio senator’s plans — such as clawing back the pay of Wall Street executives whose banks fail — have already prompted grumbling from some Trump allies.

The distance between Vance’s policy positions and Trump’s raises the question of whether the Ohio senator will move the party in his direction — or whether Vance will have to jettison some of the ideas he backed as a senator.

Vance’s office implied that the senator could still get behind the childbirth proposal. The Senate has been out of session for several weeks in June and July, between holidays and a planned break for the Republican National Convention.

His Senate office said in a statement: “Our team thoroughly reviews all legislative proposals before they’re introduced. This is standard practice."

In addition to the childbirth legislation, Vance’s staff had been working with the office of Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) on a proposal to start a new federal bank to invest in domestic manufacturing, according to two other people familiar with the matter, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private talks. The fate of that plan is also unclear, and no decisions had been made about it either way by Vance himself.

The childbirth plan would have prevented all cost-sharing requirements — including co-pays, coinsurance and deductibles — for prenatal, childbirth, neonatal and postpartum health care for Americans with private insurance and has been endorsed by both antiabortion and medical groups. Vance has supported federal “pro-family” policies to reverse falling birth rates.

Politico also reported that Vance is backing off his support for a bipartisan bill cracking down on Visa and Mastercard fees, citing comments from Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.), chair of a key House Financial Services subcommittee.

“As a VP nominee, Vance’s job is to be loyal to the Trump agenda, and some of the things he’s articulated are not in line with what Trump has said. Does the nomination of J.D. as VP mean that J.D. gets to shape the future of Trumpism? Or will the views J.D. has four years from now evolve from the views he has today?” said Avik Roy, founder of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a think tank that pushes free markets, and a former adviser to leading GOP policymakers. “It’s an extremely interesting question, and the debate remains very open.”

A spokesman for Coons declined to comment.

Janine Kritschgau, a spokeswoman for Kaine, said the Democratic senator is still hopeful the legislation can be revived.

“Senator Kaine was looking forward to introducing this legislation with Senator Vance because lowering costs, expanding access to care, and bipartisanship are top priorities for Kaine,” Kritschgau said. “For the sake of Virginians and Americans across the country, we hope it will be possible to find a path forward on this.”

Vance will be expected to cheerlead plans pushed by Trump, some of which fit awkwardly even with the rhetoric that the Ohio senator espoused in his prime-time address at the GOP convention, which included attacks on Wall Street and the influence of large corporations on both parties. There, Vance appeared to nod toward the notion that his ideas weren’t always accepted by the party’s mainstream.

Vance has previously praised President Biden’s activist antitrust enforcer at the Federal Trade Commission, called for a higher minimum wage and even once expressed support for raising taxes on corporations — positions he does not appear to have mentioned in his speeches as Trump’s running mate.

“We have a big tent on this party, on everything from national security to economic policy,” Vance said at the GOP convention. “Shouldn’t we be governed by a party that is unafraid to debate ideas and come to the best solution?”

The collision between a senator’s far-reaching policy proposals and narrower obligations as a running mate is hardly unprecedented. In 2020, for instance, then-Sen. Kamala Harris supported sweeping covid relief legislation that she quickly dropped after being elevated to the Democratic presidential ticket in 2020. Joe Biden’s plans for Iraq in 2008, when he was a senator and presidential candidate, contrasted with those of Barack Obama, whose ticket he later joined.

That has not stopped more traditional Republicans from worrying about the threat posed by Vance’s economic positions. Two people who attended the convention, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect private views, said they’d been alarmed by Vance’s rhetoric about free trade and Wall Street. These fears are compounded by the fact that Trump has already dramatically shifted the party’s platform in a direction favored by Vance, embracing high tariffs on trade and abandoning long-standing commitments to cut Social Security and Medicare.

And yet many other Republicans say it is more likely, particularly in the short term, that Vance abandons or tones down some of his push toward forming a more populist party. In an interview with Bloomberg News earlier this month, Trump reiterated his intention to cut the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 15 percent, after initially slashing it from 35 percent to 21 percent in his first term. There is little reason to believe Vance will halt that push, despite his criticisms of corporate America. Vance told Semafor in early May, “I don’t think we need to be cutting the corporate tax rate further.”

“There’s very little chance in a Trump-Vance White House that Vance will be driving the policy agenda instead of Trump,” said Michael Strain, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank. “And that means Vance will have to defend or advance ideas that are more Reaganite-conservative, because Trump believes in many of those ideas.”