How Biden Transformed the Republican Debate Over Poverty
Support for cash assistance isn’t quite universal yet, but it’s growing.
Changing the debate.
Photographer: Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The American Rescue Plan, which President Joe Biden signed into law today, contains a provision that represents a qualitative break from the welfare-to-work policies that have been in place since the 1990s. The change is also scrambling party politics — especially on the Republican side — in a way that could have lasting implications.
The new law contains a temporary expansion of the child tax credit, which sounds like a small change but isn’t. Under the provision, a single parent with two school-age children would be guaranteed $500 a month in unrestricted cash assistance even if he or she had no job and no intention of obtaining one. This kind of aid hasn’t been available since 1996, when President Bill Clinton ended the Depression-era Aid to Families With Dependent Children program.