![]() It would have established a universal Pre-K program, further boost support for child care, make community college tuition-free for two years, create the first federal paid and medical leave benefit and extend the expansion of the child tax credit and other credits. The cost and concerns about swiftly rising inflation ultimately cratered the party’s attempt in the fall of 2021 to push through Congress a sweeping $3.5 trillion package that would have massively broadened the nation’s safety net as envisioned in Biden’s jobs and families proposals. Even though Democrats controlled the White House and Congress, the hefty price tag of their ambitions forced them to make many of their measures temporary – notably the enhancement to the child tax credit, which boosted payments to as much as $3,600 per kid and made more low-income parents eligible. Temporary measures and internal resistanceĪlthough the federal government spent a record amount of money in 20 to help the nation contend with the Covid-19 pandemic, there were limits. It’s the first increase in the rate since 2010. Overall, the supplemental poverty rate was 12.4% last year, up from 7.8% last year and higher than it was prior to the pandemic. It was the largest jump in child poverty since the Supplemental Poverty Measure began in 2009. What’s more, the share of children in poverty is roughly back to where it was prior to the pandemic in 2019, based on a broader alternative measure developed by the Census Bureau. ![]() On Tuesday, the Census Bureau reported that the child poverty rate skyrocketed from a record low 5.2% in 2021, when families were receiving the enhanced child tax credit and third round of stimulus checks, to 12.4% last year. But now, most of the biggest expansion to the nation’s safety net in decades, which Biden framed as giving both working Americans and the middle class a financial break, has expired. It will cut child poverty in half.”Īnd it did – for a year. Let me say that again – it’s significant, historic. “Taken altogether, this plan is going to make it possible to cut child poverty in half. “This plan is historic,” he said that month. But it also would put in place – if even temporarily – many social supports that party leaders had been trying to accomplish for years and might, they hoped, be hard to unravel. In mid-March of that year, Biden signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act that provided big stimulus checks, more aid for the unemployed, the hungry, parents and small businesses and much more. ![]() For a few fleeting months in 2021, it looked like President Joe Biden was making great strides in his promise to even the playing field for more Americans.
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