New proof that poverty is a policy choice
The richest nation in the history of the world has chosen to impoverish millions of our children
Friends,
Poverty is a policy choice. Congress has chosen to have a significant percentage of our population impoverished, including — especially — our nation’s children.
There is no law of nature or principle of economics or constitutional provision that dictates such a high number of people in poverty within the richest nation in the history of the world.
Census data released Tuesday provides clear evidence of the choice that’s been made. The number of people with incomes below the poverty line in 2022 rose by 15.3 million. The poverty rate for children more than doubled — from a historic low of 5.2 percent in 2021 to 12.4 percent in 2022.
The United States has just experienced the largest spike in child poverty since the current models for measuring economic distress were developed in 2009. All of the record gains made against child poverty over the previous two years have been erased.
The reason for this extraordinary rise in poverty? Not the pandemic. Not a vicious recession. Not an economic depression. Not a huge increase in the numbers of people unemployed. In fact, employment is high.
The reason, according to the Census Bureau, is the refusal by Congress to renew the enhanced child tax credit that was developed during the Covid-19 pandemic. That expiration was a policy choice.
Poverty has shot upward because we as a nation (through our representatives in Congress) decided to eliminate a relatively modest bump in federal support — $250 to $300 per month for households with children.
In the previous year, that modest bump had the astounding effect of reducing the rate of child poverty by nearly half. When lawmakers expanded the child tax credit in 2021, fewer kids lived in poverty. When they failed to continue the expansion in 2022, child poverty more than doubled.
Ergo, two policy choices by Congress — one that dramatically cut child poverty, followed by a second that dramatically increased it.
Who exactly in Congress made this choice? Republicans and a handful of Democrats, such as West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema. They rejected efforts by the Biden administration and most congressional Democrats to maintain the enhanced child tax credits.
Although House Democrats backed the proposed extension of the credits, Senate Democrats needed all 50 members of their caucus to pass the legislation via the reconciliation process. Manchin refused to go along unless his colleagues accepted a scheme to penalize parents with work requirements and other restrictions.
Sinema also refused, as has been noted by the campaign of U.S. Representative Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat who is running to replace Sinema in 2024. (Let’s do everything we can to make sure he does.)
Ending poverty is not difficult, especially for wealthy nations such as the United States. We know exactly how to do it. We did it. Then we undid it. In effect, the United States is now making a concerted effort to impoverish millions of our children.
As John Nichols of The Nation reminds us, the policy choice we made in 2021 to reduce poverty is similar to the choice America made in the 1930s, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt responded to the Great Depression with the myriad job creation, rural development, and social safety net programs (including Social Security) that formed the New Deal.
When FDR took office in 1933, the unemployment rate in the U.S. was close to 25 percent. After eight years of federal interventions by the Roosevelt administration, it was down to around 10 percent when World War II began.
Similarly, just before Lyndon Johnson got Congress to enact Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, 22 percent of Americans were impoverished. When Johnson left office, it was around 13 percent. Why the drop? Because Medicare and Medicaid addressed a key driver of poverty among the elderly: medical costs. And other Great Society initiatives, such as expanded nutrition and housing programs, contributed to the decline.
This is not rocket science. The expanded Child Tax Credit cut child poverty nearly in half. Sinema, Manchin, and the GOP let it expire, and child poverty spiked.
This is not only a bad policy choice. It is an indefensible moral choice. In the richest country in the world, it is inexcusable that millions of our children are living in poverty. They don’t have to be.
Friends, expanding the Child Tax Credit should be the top tax policy priority both this year and during the 2025 tax debate. Period.
To All Americans. It’s time to choose.
What is more important, our Freedoms or continuing to allow the richest Americans to ruin our country?
Since the Reagan administration we have been getting screwed by the richest people and corporations starting with trickle down economics. The bigotry party is giving tax breaks to the wealthy and slowing taking our Freedoms away! Citizens United has pretty much taken over Congress.
Big corporations have taken control of mainstream media. The anti diversity party has taken away a women’s right of choice. Our Freedoms are on the chopping block!
To listen to some of these not conservative views from this loud minority like MTG who wants to shut down the government and impeach our president without any evidence hoping some evidence will appear after they start an inquiry. Or Vivek Ramaswamy who said he would deport children of immigrants who were born here!
On the same day the House returned, Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced that he’ll direct the chamber to open an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
A loud minority of the GOP (Gaga Over Putin) party is Corrupt and the rest of the Republicans are complicit. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin defended Trump, saying that his prosecutions show that the United States is fundamentally corrupt. Putin has created a lot of our dissent by interfering in our elections! He is Pure Evil!
Liz Cheney recently said “Putin has now officially endorsed the Putin-wing of the Republican Party. Putin Republicans & their enablers will end up on the ash heap of history. Patriotic Americans in both parties who believe in the values of liberal democracy will make sure of it.”
The Constitutional patriots in the Republican Party have to stand up against these power seeking Putineers now or their legacies will be forever tainted!
I can't buy the arguments that are made today by you (and are made so often by so many) that "we" have chosen various things—in this case to impoverish huge proportions of the U.S. population. I did not do this. Yes, I ignorantly voted for Bill Clinton, who then betrayed me by undermining and destroying much of what I had believed was "our" U.S. government (the programs and policies of FDR and also of LBJ). But I did not "do" those things.
I did not choose to undermine the University of California and make it into an institution that is available only to the wealthy or to others by incurring huge debt at huge rates of interest. I did not choose to make Community Colleges (which were called Junior Colleges when I was young) expensive—they were tuition-free when I was young, and I wanted them to stay that way.
The Democratic Party was taken over by so-called "New Democrat" types who might as well have been Ronald Reagan Republicans.
I didn't want that and I don't want it now. I support Biden because he appears to me to be trying to move the Democratic Party back to being the champion of the people, not of the banks and financiers. That's what I want and support.