A Seismic Initiative We Can All Get Behind Right Now

“Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me…” (Mark 9:37)

The single most valuable initiative currently under consideration in Congress concerns historic and sustainable relief for American children living in poverty. Why is almost no one talking about it? Here’s how you can get up to speed quickly…

• Does bipartisanship matter more than helping kids? – “It could cut child poverty in half — a good reason for this policy to continue after the pandemic is over.”

• We Are a Nation of Child Abusers – “The United States has long had one of the highest rates of child poverty in the advanced world — and then the coronavirus pandemic aggravated the suffering. Now we could have a thrilling breakthrough:”

• The National Academy of Sciences reports in A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty, that in head-to-head competition with other child poverty proposals, this proposal ranks first.

• Even Conservative Scholars and Leaders call for expanded EITC and CTC for families – this proposal “reduces poverty while fostering some of our nation’s most critical investments: those that parents make for their children.”

The work of Kathy Edin, poverty scholar at Princeton University and a contributor to the Gathering Blog, was deeply influential in the design of the plan, now many years in the making.