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America's Most Important New Social Program is About to Begin —
BY JOEL MCNALLY
On July 15, the nation’s most important new social program is scheduled to begin sending monthly cash payments of $300 for every child under 6 and $250 for those up to age 18 to all but the wealthiest American families.
President Joe Biden’s plan to assist families with the costs of childcare passed in March as part of his first emergency package of economic recovery legislation. It’s a Democratic presidential achievement as historic as the creation of Social Security by President Franklin Roosevelt, Medicare and Medicaid by President Lyndon Johnson and the Affordable Care Act by President Barack Obama.
Amazingly, the landmark national program benefitting 39 million American families and 88% of all children nationwide passed almost under the radar with surprisingly little public controversy. The direct payments of $1,400 Biden sent to Americans as economic stimulus to boost the economy received far more attention than the child payments with an annual value of $3,600 for every child under 6 and $3,000 for every older child. “With two parents, two kids, that’s $7,200 in the pockets you’re getting to help take care of your family,” Biden told a joint session of Congress in April. “That will help more than 65 million children and help cut child-care poverty in half and we can afford it.”
Republicans were caught flat-footed. Biden had just soundly defeated their disastrous president. Republicans had no control over either the House or Senate and Democrats used a special Senate budget process to pass Biden’s economic recovery program that didn’t allow a minority of Republicans to undemocratically filibuster desperately needed legislation.
It was a good thing because not a single Republican in either the House or the Senate voted to support Biden’s national economic recovery plan. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said every Senate Republican was 100% committed to preventing Biden’s agenda from succeeding. That brazenly unpatriotic stand was so absolute Republicans even voted against the $1,400 payments their constituents were eager to receive that were originally proposed by their own defeated president. Republican leaders seem to believe their own voters aren’t bright enough to realize Republican gridlock preventing America’s economic recovery will hurt them.
BENEFITTING ALL AMERICANS
When parents begin receiving monthly payments to help with family expenses, they’ll certainly recognize the value of government programs benefitting all Americans. Biden aspires to an FDR presidency. Biden’s family benefit follows the model of Social Security, Roosevelt’s most popular and enduring social program. It attacks childhood poverty the same way Social Security sought to end poverty among the elderly while benefitting every other American family at the same time.
Biden’s emergency economic plan only funded the family benefit for a year, but Democrats already are planning to extend it through at least 2025. They’d be foolish not to. It’s likely to be included in the next budget reconciliation bill to be passed before the midterms in the Senate with a simple majority vote with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking a 50-50 tie if necessary. It might even attract some Republican votes. Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney previously proposed a similar child benefit promoting it as a family-friendly, Republican program that would discourage abortion.
Democrats would be happy to fight the 2022 midterms over Republican attempts to destroy Biden’s child benefits going to millions of American families just like they
successfully fought the 2018 midterms over Republican attempts to destroy the health care protections of the Affordable Care Act. Make no mistake about it. The Republican attacks on what is certain to be a popular Democratic government program benefitting American families are coming.
Here’s what Republican leaders absolutely hate about the program. Even though the child benefits are administered by the Internal Revenue Service, the payments aren’t limited to families that pay income taxes. The reason Biden’s program substantially reduces childhood poverty is payments go to families who need them most, those so desperately poor they owe no taxes. For decades, Republicans have disparaged the poor, often in racist terms as black and brown folks who would rather loll about living off the government than work. There have always been far more poor white Americans than any other race. These days a lot of them live in dying small towns and rural areas where they were attracted by the angry, racist rhetoric of the former Republican president who did absolutely nothing to improve their lives. Instead, he passed enormous tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires including himself and his family.
But living through a president who had no idea what to do to protect Americans from a deadly pandemic that shut down their national economy gave the country an appreciation for a competent president like Joe Biden who knows how to create a government program reducing the everyday kitchen table struggles of American families. That’s not the kind of government program Republicans can easily demonize and kill.
Joel McNally was a critic and columnist for the Milwaukee Journal for 27 years. He has written the weekly Taking Liberties column for the Shepherd Express since 1996.
