The child poverty rate doubled. Blame Congressional Republicans — and this Democrat | Opinion

The rate of child poverty doubled in 2022, despite a growing economy and an increasingly tight labor market.

Why?

Because of a policy choice made by Congress. The American Rescue Plan, signed into law by Joe Biden in March 2021, contained provisions that increased the tax credits families received for having children and made them fully refundable (so that poor families who did not owe federal taxes would still receive them). The program was a major success when it was in place, cutting child poverty in half.

So, in other words, Congress identified a problem, found a solution, that solution worked smashingly well, and yet Congress chose to let the program end. Why? Most of the blame lies with opponents who have put ideology over evidence. But the program’s architects also made a crucial mistake in constructing the law.

Because the Democratic Party is becoming more popular with urban educated professionals while losing ground with rural voters, you might think that it was affluent urban liberals who chose not to prioritize a program that primarily benefited poor families, but this is not the case. Liberal Democrats in Congress favored the program and are now urging Congress to restore it. It’s Republicans who opposed the tax credits and are the primary barrier to restoring a program that would save many children from economic misery —because, they claim, the tax credits are too expensive or disincentivize work.

But the tax credit was also allowed to expire because of opposition by a critical Democratic vote in the Senate, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. It was not snooty urban elitists but a senator from a predominantly rural state with one of the highest rates of child poverty in the country who torpedoed the program. Explaining his refusal to support extending the credits to other Democrats, Manchin asserted that recipients “would waste monthly child tax credit payments on drugs instead of providing for their children.”

Five million children have been consigned to poverty, in other words, because Manchin believes in crude negative stereotypes about his own constituents that have been contradicted by clear evidence.

While blind ideological opposition to helping families escape poverty is dismaying, it also can’t be considered surprising. Which leads us to another question: Why did the architects of the bill allow the credits to expire after only a year?

The premise behind the decision was the plausible-sounding assumption that once a program that provides material benefits to people proves successful, it is generally hard to take this program away. From Social Security to Medicare to the Affordable Care Act, opponents of controversial expansions of the welfare state have been unable to repeal them, even when Republicans controlled Congress and the White House. Supporters of the ARP believed (correctly) that the child tax credits would be successful, so history would dictate that they would be renewed.

But there’s a critical difference between the American Rescue Plan and the other expansions of the welfare state. Programs like Social Security and the Affordable Care Act were permanent. Once a social program is put in place with a dedicated funding source, the force of inertia and the many veto points in the American political system that make new social programs difficult to pass in the first place also make them harder to repeal. This is particularly important when programs primarily benefit poor people who are less likely to vote and are generally not the priority of well-heeled donors.

Because they were allowed to expire after a year, however, the family allowance provisions in the American Recovery Plan did not benefit from this advantage. The easiest thing for Congress to do is nothing, and this made the expiration of the child tax credits nearly inevitable despite the fact that its supporters were right that it would produce a major reduction in child poverty. Manchin’s opposition to continuing the program is worthy of serious criticism, but congressional leadership and President Biden also unwisely chose to empower him.

In an ideal world, the evidence that expanding refundable tax credits to families with children substantially reduces child poverty would overcome ideological opposition, and a critical mass of Republicans and conservative Democrats would stop punishing children for the real or imagined sins of their parents.

More realistically, the next time Democrats have full control of both houses, they should pass aid to poor families that is permanent, fully funded, and not allowed to expire through simple attrition.

This story was originally published September 19, 2023 at 6:00 AM with the headline "The child poverty rate doubled. Blame Congressional Republicans — and this Democrat | Opinion."