{"id":13357,"date":"2022-04-20T18:35:09","date_gmt":"2022-04-21T01:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=13357"},"modified":"2022-04-21T18:35:34","modified_gmt":"2022-04-22T01:35:34","slug":"america-has-turned-its-back-on-its-poorest-families-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=13357","title":{"rendered":"“America Has Turned Its Back on Its Poorest Families”, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ezra Klein, Opinion, April 20, 2023<\/p>\n

\u201cWe said we wouldn\u2019t accept the levels of child poverty we have as a permanent feature of our democracy,\u201d Senator Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado, told me. \u201cAnd not only did the world not come to an end, but the families I talked to, who spent the money on everything from school clothes to a bicycle, were relieved of stress. That was the word they used with me. They were relieved of enormous, backbreaking stress.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Elizabeth Elias and Jose Espinoza, seen at home with their children in California\u2019s Central Valley.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Melina Mara\/The Washington Post, via Getty Images<\/span>\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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Bennet is talking about the single best policy of the Biden era, a policy he helped design: The expanded child tax credit. It gave parents $3,000 for every child age 6 to 17 and $3,600 for every child under age 6. There were no strings attached. It was just money. It could be used for child care, for food, for clothes, for anything. It treated parents, even poor parents, as the experts on their family\u2019s finances, a quietly radical idea in American social policy. It was a huge experiment, it was studied exhaustively, and we can now say this definitively: It worked.<\/p>\n

A study out of Columbia found it cut child poverty by more than 25 percent<\/a>, pulling 3.4 million children above the poverty line, despite the raging Covid pandemic. Data from the census shows that the number of parents who said that their children didn\u2019t have enough to eat fell by more than three million<\/a>. Conservatives warned that the benefit would discourage work among parents, but the economists watched, and there\u2019s no evidence it did<\/a>. Poor people, just like rich people, want to live on more than $3,000 per child per year.<\/p>\n

The spending of families receiving the credit was tracked and studied because Americans harbor a deep suspicion that if you send poor people money, they\u2019ll spend it on luxuries and booze. But among low-income families, more than 90 percent<\/a> was spent on food, utilities, shelter, clothing or education. When you\u2019re struggling, there\u2019s no luxury quite like being able to worry a little bit less about money. This was the first policy, to my knowledge, to go viral on TikTok, and the videos are worth watching<\/a>: People dancing, laughing, gleeful that their rent was suddenly easier to make or that they could get their cars fixed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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All of this was data from just a couple of months. The real power of money like this comes over time. A different paper<\/a>, also out of Columbia, looked at a range of studies on the benefits of cash payments to families with young children. Here\u2019s the takeaway: A $3,000-a-year child benefit would pay for itself 10 times over. These payments come back in higher long-term earnings, higher educational attainment, higher birth weights, lower neonatal mortality, better adult physical health and better adult mental health. They lead to less crime and higher tax revenues and longer life expectancy.<\/p>\n

Of course they do. Sometimes economists come up with unexpected, counterintuitive findings. But there\u2019s nothing surprising about the finding that it\u2019s good for children to grow up with more money, that it\u2019s good for parents to know they can get their car fixed or buy back-to-school clothes. That\u2019s why parents work so hard, at jobs they often hate, year after year. And that\u2019s why it\u2019s such a moral horror that a country as wealthy as ours leaves so many children in poverty.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt worked,\u201d Bennet said. \u201cAnd that makes it all the more confounding that we find ourselves in the position we\u2019re in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the position we\u2019re in: That expansion? It\u2019s gone. The American Rescue Plan provided the extra money for a year. The theory was that the policy would be popular and Congress wouldn\u2019t permit it to expire. But the theory was wrong, at least so far. The Biden administration added an extension in Build Back Better, but that bill died, and there\u2019s no immediate hope of revival. Once again, we are accepting our prepandemic levels of child poverty as a permanent feature of our democracy.<\/p>\n

And so the Biden administration\u2019s single biggest policy success has turned, for now, into a signal political failure. What went wrong, and how can it be salvaged or at least not repeated? I\u2019ve been asking that question of politicians, strategists, scholars and activists, and a few theories dominate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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One is that Democrats made a mistake in letting it expire after a year. That just wasn\u2019t long enough to create the expectations necessary for the political pressure they were counting on. \u201cPolicies can become a part of our understanding of what government should rightfully be doing,\u201d Jamila Michener, a political scientist at Cornell, told me. \u201cThe classic stories there are Social Security and Medicare. But a lot has to happen for those feedback effects to take hold. You need people to know where the benefit is coming from, who they should be rewarding, and then they need to be motivated \u2014 often mobilized or organized into responding in some way politically. You need time for those feedback effects to materialize.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bush tax cuts show how this can work. They were set to expire after around 10 years but were mostly made permanent under President Barack Obama because Democrats feared the political consequences of tax hikes. \u201cI\u2019ve been around the Senate, Christmas Eve after Christmas Eve, when tax cuts were expiring for the richest people and corporations,\u201d Bennet said. \u201cAnd we have never ever had any trouble extending those tax breaks. We\u2019ve cut taxes by $8 trillion since 2001, most of it going to the wealthiest people, and when those are expiring, nobody leaves here until it\u2019s done, and it\u2019s done when they\u2019re extended.\u201d<\/p>\n

But one year isn\u2019t 10 years. And 2021 was a particularly weird year, with a raft of unusual policies \u2014 stimulus checks, expanded unemployment insurance \u2014 blinking into and out of existence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Nancy Pelosi at a news conference on the expanded child tax credit in Los Angeles last year.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Mario Tama\/Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cIn retrospect, it really would have been wise to have structured that first child tax credit in the American Rescue Plan to go through the midterm elections,\u201d Sean McElwee, the chief executive of Data for Progress, told me. \u201cWe should have figured out whatever mechanism would have been necessary such that it didn\u2019t expire. Because it turns out that expiring the child tax credit in December was not the forcing mechanism that we may have thought it would be.\u201d<\/p>\n

This speaks to a broader problem Democrats had, which is simple confusion about what this policy was and where it was coming from. That was a downside of passing the policy as one piece of a larger stimulus package. The fight over the Affordable Care Act, which dominated politics in 2009 and 2010, made it very clear that whether you liked the health care law or hated it, it was Democrats you had to thank for it. But there was no huge argument over child poverty in America that culminated in the Democrats\u2019 policy.<\/p>\n

Michener told me the story of talking to her nephew, a 22-year-old who has a young daughter. \u201cI know you don\u2019t agree with me, but this is one of the reasons I really liked Trump,\u201d he told her. \u201cBecause I started getting checks when Trump was president.\u201d That sound you hear is the sound of every Democrat who\u2019s reading this weeping. \u201cHe didn\u2019t really see the difference between the checks with Trump\u2019s name on them and all the other checks that flowed in thereafter,\u201d Michener said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Biden\u2019s Build Back Better plan would have extended the credit, but it also would\u2019ve done dozens of other things. This made sense as legislative strategy, but it made messaging nearly impossible. To be for or against Build Back Better wasn\u2019t to be for or against the child tax credit or the climate policies or the pre-K policies or the Affordable Care Act expansion or the corporate tax changes or the R&D investments or any of the dozens of other items in the bill. To the extent anything defined the package in the public mind, it was the initial price tag: $3.5 trillion.<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t some inexplicable messaging error. It\u2019s a product of a broken Senate that now does much of its major legislating through the bizarre budget reconciliation process, the perversions of which I described in an earlier column<\/a>. Two of those problems afflicted Build Back Better. First, before you can write a reconciliation bill, you need to name the bill\u2019s price tag. \u201cYou start the debate in the wrong place,\u201d Sharon Parrott, the president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told me.<\/p>\n

Second, because you can do only one or two reconciliation bills a year, you have to jam together everything you fear the other side will filibuster. Getting voters to pay attention to one policy debate, and hold their representatives accountable on it, is hard enough. Getting them to track six or 12, all of them tossed into one legislative sack, is impossible. This is another way the filibuster has made government more confusing and less accountable.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the Manchin-and-Sinema factor. If Democrats had won the 2020 Senate races in North Carolina and Maine, perhaps Build Back Better would have passed. But with a 50-50 Senate, they need a perfectly united caucus to pass anything without Republican votes, and they don\u2019t have one. Senator Joe Manchin, in particular, was the pivotal vote, and the Democrats lost him. Whether they could have won his vote is a counterfactual I can\u2019t convincingly answer.<\/p>\n

But those who negotiated with him say Manchin had a particular problem with the child tax credit. He held the view that it gave too much money to poor people who weren\u2019t working, encouraging them to remain unemployed or leave jobs they already had. \u201cI\u2019ve shown him the evidence that countries with higher childhood allowances have higher work force participation rates than our own country, and I\u2019ve not persuaded him,\u201d Bennet said, clearly frustrated.<\/p>\n

The moral heart of this shouldn\u2019t be lost. There are ways to make it easier for poor parents to work or, if you must, more painful for them to remain unemployed. Condemning children to poverty shouldn\u2019t be one of them. \u201cThere is this fundamental question of when, as a country, we\u2019ll see the humanity in every child,\u201d Parrott said. \u201cLeaving children in deep poverty is an unacceptable thing to do because we don\u2019t trust, or want to punish, their parents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nor is inflation a reason to leave children in poverty. Extending the expanded child tax credit would cost about $100 billion per year for the next few years \u2014 less than 0.5 percent of U.S. G.D.P. And it could easily be paired with policies raising taxes or cutting spending elsewhere, making the overall impact on spending nil.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The story isn\u2019t over. There\u2019s still hope that some set of the Build Back Better investments can be resuscitated, a smaller child tax credit among them. Corporations are lobbying for the extension of a research and experimentation tax credit that could be part of a deal that includes the child tax credit. Romney has an excellent child allowance plan of his own, and while he\u2019s found few allies on his side of the aisle, hope springs eternal. And maybe Manchin will wake up one morning and decide to accept the kind of deal he\u2019s floated in recent months. Reversing the Trump tax cuts, which he says he favors, would raise more than $1.5 trillion. He wants to put half of that toward deficit reduction \u2014 fine. Split the rest between climate investments and a permanent child tax credit targeted at the poorest families, which would be cheaper than the broader tax credit in the American Rescue Plan, which didn\u2019t phase out completely until you reached $150,000 in family income.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my optimistic spin, though I admit I\u2019m not in a very optimistic mood these days. A decade ago, a child tax credit this large was unthinkable in American politics. Come 2021, it was being proposed by moderates like Bennet and Republicans like Romney, and Democrats passed it into law the first chance they got. The case for it has only strengthened since: We saw how well it worked, how many people it helped. It may or may not be revived this year, but it now sits firmly in the realm of the politically possible. It has made clear what we have always known: This much child poverty, in a country as rich as our own, is a policy choice, and an abominable one.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this will be permanent tax policy someday,\u201d Bennet said. Me too. Here\u2019s hoping someday is very soon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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More on family policy<\/div>\n
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Opinion | Samuel Hammond<\/div>\n
To Help Children, Democrats Are Going to Have to Reach Across the Aisle<\/div>\n
April 12, 2022<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Opinion | Bryce Covert<\/div>\n
Joe Manchin, This Is What We Can\u2019t Afford<\/div>\n
Nov. 12, 2021<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Opinion | The Editorial Board<\/div>\n
Mitt Romney Has a Plan, and Joe Biden Should Borrow From It<\/div>\n
Feb. 23, 2021<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Times is committed to publishing <\/em>a diversity of letters<\/em><\/a> to the editor. We\u2019d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some <\/em>tips<\/em><\/a>. And here\u2019s our email: <\/em>letters@nytimes.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on <\/em>Facebook<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Twitter (@NYTopinion)<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>Instagram<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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Ezra Klein joined Opinion in 2021. Previously, he was the founder, editor in chief and then editor-at-large of Vox; the host of the podcast, \u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\u201d; and the author of \u201cWhy We\u2019re Polarized.\u201d Before that, he was a columnist and editor at The Washington Post, where he founded and led the Wonkblog vertical. @<\/span>ezraklein<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

A version of this article appears in print on April 20, 2022<\/span>, Section A, Page 23 of the New York edition with the headline: America Has Turned Its Back on Its Poorest Families.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ezra Klein, Opinion, April 20, 2023 \u201cWe said we wouldn\u2019t accept the levels of child poverty we have as a permanent feature of our democracy,\u201d Senator Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado, told me. \u201cAnd not only did the world not come to an end, but the families I talked to, who spent the money on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13357"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13358,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13357\/revisions\/13358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}