Alex Brandon/AP Photo
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signs the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, accompanied by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, during an enrollment ceremony on Capitol Hill, March 10, 2021.
Something extraordinary happened today which is worth celebrating—the most far-reaching expansion of government help to children and families since FDR.
A year ago, a universal basic income was a radical fringe idea. Well, we’ve just enacted it for families with children. And once in place, this will prove almost impossible to dislodge.
Imagine the politics next fall when Democrats propose making the Child Tax Credit permanent, and Republicans propose a massive tax increase on American families. My sources say Biden is committed to making this policy permanent.
Consider the arithmetic. A family with two parents and three kids will be getting about $14,000 a year. It just happens that this is almost identical to what a minimum-wage job pays if you work full-time ($7.25 an hour times 2,000 hours).
This is revolutionary, and will compel employers to pay a great deal more to get workers.
Think of what it took to make this transformative social policy mainstream. It took a pandemic. It took the improbable Democratic victories in Georgia to get 50 Senate votes. It took rare Democratic unity. And it took the radicalization of one Joe Biden.
Even more remarkably, while the two previous transformative Democratic presidents, LBJ and FDR, had huge Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate, Biden has done it with fumes.
Sometimes, things break right. It’s a day to celebrate.
