Congress Is Considering Financial Help for Parents. Here Are Details.

[ed. Versus $1. 64 trillion (14 percent of the US budget) in financial help for the military, which is a given.]

None of the family policies the Biden administration has wanted — an expanded child allowance, paid family leave or subsidized child care — have come to pass. Now, with less than a month before the new Congress starts, Democrats are trying once more to push through one of them: the expanded child allowance.

The idea had a test run in the second half of 2021, when the administration sent families monthly checks as part of the pandemic relief package. The bill raised the amount of the pre-existing child tax credit, and also included families with very little or no income. The result was a near doubling of government investment in children and a substantial reduction in child poverty. Since that expansion ended, one in four children have received less than the full amount, including about four in 10 Black and Latino children. About 3 percent — children of the lowest-earning parents — get nothing.

In current debates about the child tax credit, the biggest point of contention is who would receive it. Many Democrats again want to expand it to the lowest earners. Some Republicans want to continue to give it only to families who earn a certain amount, to encourage parents to work.

by Claire Cain Miller and Alicia Parlapiano, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
[ed. Pretty much says it all. Regardless of what Republicans think poor people's motives are (mostly surviving, I'd imagine), is there anything more heartless than letting children starve? To make a point? Update: Apparently not - Millions to lose Medicaid coverage under Congress' plan (Yahoo News). But really, it's just because they care and are actually trying to help poor people (for their own good):]

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"Based on the evidence we have now, a permanent child allowance would indeed reduce poverty among those who fall temporarily on hard times. (That is the initial effect, after all, of giving people money.) But among those families with the weakest attachment to stable work and family life, it would be likely to consign them to more entrenched multigenerational poverty by further disconnecting them from those institutions. (...)

There would probably be unintended consequences to a child allowance apart from creating an incentive for parents to stop working: Some parents would continue to work but work fewer hours; some parents would choose to divorce or never marry in the first place; some would have a child they would not have had absent the additional benefits. [ed. And lack of abortion options]. All of those behaviors, however warranted they might be in individual cases, lead to greater poverty in general. That would further dampen the effect of a child allowance." - The True Cost of Expanding the Child Tax Credit (NYT).