Congress Ends Welfare Reform as We Know It
The $1.9 trillion Covid stimulus that the House is expected to pass Wednesday includes roughly $100 billion in aid to families with dependent children.
If that phrase rings a bell, it’s because “Aid to Families with Dependent Children” was the name of the New Deal-era welfare program eliminated by President Bill Clinton’s 1996 welfare reform bill. Back then, Democrats worried (with some reason) that AFDC enabled, for some families, long-term dependency on welfare. To limit time spent collecting welfare and to move low-income mothers off the dole, Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act.
Now, a quarter-century later, in the midst of a Covid recession, the Democrats are reviving no-strings financial assistance to families with children. The bill nearly doubles the Treasury’s expenditure on the child tax credit, and extends eligibility to nearly everyone. The Covid bill would increase the maximum child tax credit from $2,000 per child to $3,600 per child. It would also, for the first time, extend the benefit to nonworking Americans—a significant departure from the program’s origins in 1997 as a tax break for middle- and upper-income families.
A party that previously quaked in fear of being caricatured as a gang of tax-and-spend liberals is fearful no more. In Washington, government handouts are respectable again.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/congress-ends-welfare-reform-as-we-know-it/ar-BB1ercMF?ocid=DELLDHP
I don't believe the COVID aid package is anywhere on the level of payments the AFDC gave.
