Senator Romney’s plan, the Family Security Act, includes an allowance of $250 per month ($3,000 per year) for each child ages 6-7, and $350 ($4,200 per year) for kids ages 0-5. These monthly installments would be sent out by the Social Security Administration (SSA), so families would not have to sign up for any program in order to receive the checks. A child from a family with poverty-level incomes has significantly worse economic and educational outcomes and earns less than children from wealthier families. The Niskanen Center, a public policy think tank, found that the plan would lift one third of children and 5.1 million people out of poverty, and poverty across the board would fall by 14%.  

Childcare is both expensive and difficult to access. According to the Center for American Progress, over half of Americans live in childcare deserts. In places that lack childcare infrastructure, parents need to stay home instead of work. When childcare deserts do develop more robust childcare infrastructure like daycares, parents struggle to pay for it. Because of the enormous cost of childcare, families are increasingly having fewer kids than they would like to have.

Compared with other countries, the United States has a weak support system for struggling families. Countries such as Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom created child allowances in the 1940s, while the US waited until 1997 to provide relief for families. (At one point a child allowance plan reached President Nixon’s desk, but he refused to sign it.) Unlike other countries, though, the US enacted non-refundable tax credits, which exclude poor families that do not pay taxes. Only half of the tax credit is refundable, so even poor families who do file, still do not receive full benefits. Romney’s plan would replace the Child Tax Credit (CTC), which amounts to just $2,000 a year and is accessible only to people who make more than $11,000 annually. Under the CTC, not only do the poorest families miss out on relief, but roughly 22% of eligible families do not actually get it because of complicated administrative procedures. By going through the SSA, nobody would have to sign up in order to receive their checks. Wealthy families would receive the checks, too, but they would return the money on April 15. This is another mechanism to ensure that everyone eligible receives the money.

The United States never enacted a child allowance because of the stigma surrounding welfare. In other countries, there is little discursive distinction between refundable and non-refundable tax credits. Meanwhile, Senators Marco Rubio and Mike Lee equated Romney’s plan with “welfare assistance” that will disincentivize work and proposed their own plan to expand the CTC. Concerns about disincentivizing work remain groundless. On average, parents spend about $6,000 per child annually. People have other expenses besides children, so nobody can live off of a child allowance check. Regardless, under Romney’s plan, choosing to work does not even cause people to lose their benefit. People can take higher-paying jobs and receive the same benefits. 

Countries with similar child allowances have not experienced reductions in employment. Canada enacted payments in 2006, and employment increased for single mothers. Employment decreased for single mothers without college degrees, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. Why should people be forced into physically and emotionally taxing low-wage labor to support their families when our government is wealthy enough to support them? Perhaps mothers want to stay with their children instead of engaging in arduous daily labor that barely provides them financial security. Republicans’ obsession with work seems to override their supposed support for family values. 

Republicans also tend to be obsessed with the deficit. Romney’s plan does not increase the deficit, which could help it garner bipartisan support and pass without having to use budget reconciliation. However, the consequences of keeping spending minimal seem to outweigh the costs. Romney plans to pay for the child allowance by cutting programs that millions of families depend on. It would eliminate Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the child dependent care credit, and State And Local Tax deduction (SALT). To be fair, these programs are indeed flawed. SALT is regressive and mostly benefits wealthy people. While Democratic Congress members might be hesitant to support the plan because most of the money from SALT goes to blue states, eliminating it would not hurt a substantial number of poor families and would actually raise taxes on wealthy people. The child-dependent care credit is also poorly targeted and inaccessible to families who do not have incomes. States decide how they distribute TANF funding, and several states use the money to finance anti-abortion clinics or programs intended to discourage single parenting. Only 23% of people who are eligible for TANF receive the benefits. 

Eliminating the EITC, though, would hurt families. Poor families with children over five currently receive $5,420 through the EITC and CTC. That is $1,420 more than they would receive under Romney’s proposal. Larger families would also be punished under the plan in the name of saving money. Romney proposed a $15,000 benefit cap, so large families would receive less money per child. The plan also phases out at $200,000 for single parents and $400,00 for married parents. Matt Bruenig, of the People’s Policy Project, found that the phase-out and the benefit would save only $7 billion, or 2.8% of the plan’s total cost. Even though the plan distributes money more easily than current policies do, saving 2.8% does not seem to be worth dealing with the administrative costs of a phase-out. The deficit neutrality of Romney’s plan might garner more Republican support, but they did not care about deficits during the Trump administration. The United States ran major deficits after Trump’s tax cuts, and interest rates stayed low. There was no hint of an economic collapse. We should not have to slash every single child benefit to enact a universal allowance.

But Romney’s proposal is better than the status quo, and unlike Biden’s plan, it is permanent. It does not need budget reconciliation to pass. Biden’s child allowance included in the stimulus package expires in December, and the plan he proposed on his campaign has fewer lifetime benefits than Romney’s. It also utilizes the IRS, which is not designed as a welfare agency like the SSA. Romney’s plan is simple, accessible, and negotiable, and his team is already hoping to negotiate with Biden. As Dylan Matthews of Vox says, we mustn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. “It might not be Chuck Schumer’s ideal plan,” Matthews writes, “but it would help millions of families with children in a straightforward way.”

Straightforward is a keyword here. Fights about welfare, work disincentives, and excess generosity undermine the efficacy of the current welfare system. That could be changing. Stimulus checks were popular–so popular that Congress passed the second round of them. Recipients of stimulus checks are not sitting watching TV all day, but mothers are slaving away at unfulfilling, minimum wage jobs despite wanting to stay home with their kids. If we really want to get people help, we need a simpler method than complicated bureaucratic procedures and we need to give people money monthly, not yearly. People cannot wait. 

The results of the 2022 elections are unpredictable. Hopefully, Democrats keep a majority. Perhaps Congress will abolish the filibuster. In the meantime, Congress cannot continue to rely on budget reconciliation to pass vital legislation that could be dismantled by the next administration or Congress. “Bipartisanship” has certainly become a buzzword. It often feels like an excuse to suppress progressive policy ambitions. Unfortunately, we need to embrace bipartisanship when we can because people’s livelihoods depend on it. Romney’s Family Security Act would lift 5.1 million people out of poverty and one third of children out of poverty through procedures that are easy for people to navigate. A single mother working nonstop shifts to support her children should not have to deal with an unnecessarily intricate welfare system in order to receive yearly help. Families who are unemployed should not be punished for having no taxable income, and their children should not be punished for their parent’s unemployment. Instead, all children deserve the opportunity to transform their socioeconomic status.  

The United States needs a more robust and accessible welfare state, and this is an excellent place to start.