“Tucked inside President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan is a seemingly radical notion that children should not grow up in poverty.”
That’s the first sentence of an Associated Press report, a portion of which appeared Tuesday in the Chattanooga Times Free Press on page A8.
“The Democratic plan would likely mark the most significant step in the fight against child poverty since LBJ’s Great Society,” said Daniel Hemel, a law professor at the University of Chicago, who noted that a family with two school-age children and no income would get $6,000 under the proposal.
This one-time – repeat, one-time – benefit is intended to help relieve millions of families hurt by the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Parents have lost their access to child care, pushing them out of the labor force and hindering the economic recovery, the AP reported. Children have gone without the classroom time needed for social and academic progress.
It’s a reasonable rescue plan, especially as an immediate response to the pandemic that already has changed our lives for a year.