US Policies Already Fail Our Children. The GOP’s Budget Bill Will Make Things Worse.

It’s hard to imagine US public policy getting worse for children when we already fall so behind other countries. But the Republican reconciliation bill that passed on July 3 will truly make things worse.

Don’t let the messaging fool you. President Trump and his allies are leaning on the failed playbook of trickle-down economics to argue that the law will unleash economic growth. But in reality, this budget is an austerity-driven agenda to yank social safety nets from vulnerable people and hand out tax breaks to corporations and rich individuals. The consequences of the budget are estimated to hit low-income children and families the hardest. Yale’s Budget Lab found that the law will result in the bottom 40 percent of American households losing income, while the top 0.1 percent will gain an average of $118,000 each. Congress just took medical care and food away from children to give massive tax breaks to some of the richest people in the world.

Let’s start with the impact on health benefits. An estimated 1 in 5 children could be at risk of losing their Medicaid coverage based on the final version of the Republican budget. New work requirements and drastic increases in administrative burden will disenroll recipients who miss the newly frequent paperwork and eligibility deadlines put in place by the law. Along with massive cuts to programs, this reduction in service will amount to more than $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade.

This is a disastrous policy choice for children and families given that Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) combined cover nearly half of all US children and over 40 percent of births. Medicaid also provides critical coverage and services for the most vulnerable children, including children in the child welfare system and children with special health care needs like chronic illnesses, disabilities, and behavioral health challenges. There’s also the risk of collateral damage to children that comes from imposing work requirements on parents of children over age 14.

This legislation will inflict historic losses in health insurance coverage among the neediest families in the country while simultaneously increasing costs, paperwork, and new work requirements for no discernible public policy benefit.

Far from stopping there, the new law raids the pantries of these very same families. More than 62 percent of SNAP participants are in families with children. Yet, for the first time in 50 years, the federal government will no longer ensure food assistance for all low-income children (as well as older adults and people with disabilities). The law accomplishes this by slashing federal funding for benefits provided by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), forcing an unfunded mandate on states to fill in the gaps—largely impossible given state budget constraints, including the inability to deficit-spend.

What’s more, cuts and expanded work requirements around SNAP will have ripple effects on children, as SNAP eligibility is used to predict eligibility for other social programs for children, such as Head Start and free or reduced-price lunch. The Urban Institute estimates that the law’s changes to SNAP could put at least 16 million students at risk of losing access to their school or state’s free school meal program. The law will also take away current exemptions from the SNAP work requirement from former foster youth, even for those as young as 18. Overall, the law is estimated to put nearly a million school-aged children at risk of hunger and food insecurity.

Knowing full well the harm they were causing, lawmakers tried to soften the impact of these devastating cuts by pointing to provisions like $1,000 accounts for newborns, an increase in certain tax credits, or no federal taxes on tips. These concessions have their limits:

• The so-called “Trump accounts” can’t be used to pay for things families need now, like medical care and food. Not only is the account a worse option compared to other savings accounts; after 18 years, that $1,000 deposit would likely only grow to $3,000 or $4,000, not enough to make a difference in future housing or education costs.
• Some might also point to the hidden spending on expanded tax credits for childcare as a win for families, but Roosevelt research shows that this approach is ineffective in solving the care crisis, and the plain text of the tax provisions make them inaccessible to poorer families who don’t earn enough to have a tax liability.
  • The budget’s modest increase in the Child Tax Credit may also seem enticing, but the poorest tax filers likely won’t earn enough to get the benefit, and the expanded amount is not refundable. (Translation: It will not put money in parents’ pockets.)
• Even the marquee promise not to tax tips falls flat: Not only will the policy only last four years, but only 4 percent of families filing taxes even report tips that would trigger this benefit.

Families need a viable public policy agenda that helps pull them out of poverty. The US has higher child poverty rates than our peer wealthy nations, with 1 in 7 children living in poverty, and ranks at a dismal 31st out of 36 in child well-being among countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). It should surprise no one to learn that American parents are among the unhappiest parents in the world.

These shameful statistics are a direct result of the fact that we lag behind in pro-child, family-sustaining, social safety net public policies. Our peer nations rightfully see their governments as critical partners to ensuring families and children thrive. The US, on the other hand, leaves too much up to the private market for family life.

We starve programs for children in poverty, underfund public schools, and fail to provide any of the basic safety-net policies we see all over the world: paid family and medical leave, supply-side investments in universal childcare and after-school and summer care, an expanded Child Tax Credit families can actually claim, and other policies like continuous access to health care and direct income support for parents and caregivers in need. Such investments create the conditions that both promote human flourishing, which should be the moral obligation of governments and economies, and foster a thriving, sustainable economic system. Giving handouts to the wealthy does not improve the economy. Investing in kids does.

We must loudly call the Republican budget bill what it is: anti-children and anti-family. If lawmakers want to be “pro-family,” they should start by acknowledging that our government should be in the business of investing in children.