OPINION | The Biden administration’s child tax credit creates a floor on families’ poverty. Can we keep going?
On cold concrete we lie on freezing rain and snow
We hide behind our blankets, dirty tarps and tent
The small and cruel can see we are weak and all alone
For all our toys are sold and all our money spent
Outcast and abandoned we cannot pay our rent
—Peter Salzmann, Street Roots vendor and poet
For the virtual Street Roots Vendor Voices poetry reading this weekend, Peter Salzmann performed his poem from beneath an overpass with puddles of snow on the ground, his bedroll over his back.
Federal policy has abandoned many people, casting them out into extreme poverty. In particular, it has been a quarter-century since the Clinton administration destroyed the federal welfare system that was created as part of the New Deal, replacing it with one that was designed to fail people; success was measured by the number of people dropped from welfare. Never mind that wages weren’t high enough in the trumpeted jobs, or that people were still in poverty; they just no longer had access to cash support.
The Clinton welfare program of 1996 was called the “The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act” — bootstrappy language that implies people just need to try harder. This welfare reform was a continuation of the Reagan era of demonizing the poor and withdrawing federal support.
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As we look out at poverty on the streets, we see this philosophy in action.
But it’s a new era, one in which — to quote Doug Marks, another Street Roots poet who read his prose this weekend — society has “forged in fire.”
Many of us who survive or escape the virus are not able to say goodbye or bury our dead. And, it is under the circumstances of the pandemic — so tragic to many — that some of the wealthiest among us continue to amass more wealth.
Meanwhile, people have to choose between holding jobs and supporting their children who crane their necks over laptops while teachers desperately try to engage them. If they have a laptop. If they have a signal.
It couldn’t be clearer that the idea that poverty is a moral failure is itself the actual failure. Extreme wealth can hardly be described as the result of virtue, after all.
The new frame should be that: In a land of plenty, it is poverty that is society’s failure. At the very least, there should be some kind of limit on poverty — a floor.
As it is now, it’s an abyss into which Peter and many other Street Roots vendors fall.
But now, the new child tax credit represents a floor.
After 25 years of the gutted welfare structure, a continuation of efforts from Reagan forward — and of which President Joe Biden, as a senator, played a part — the Biden administration introduced child tax credit that, according to the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, is structured to cut child poverty by almost half. For Black families, it cuts it by more than half. It’s only for one year, tucked into the $1.9 million American Rescue Plan, but from here we build.
What is particularly significant is how straightforward and simple this is. Rather than struggling to fit the qualifications — and my goodness, people have to put so much time into doing this — families simply will get $300 each month for each child under age 6; $250 for children ages 6 through 17. The payments will reach more than 90% of families with children. And you don’t have to jump through hoops and over hurdles to prove you deserve it, you simply must have filed your taxes the previous year. Instead of submitting an onerous application, you can focus on the hard work of living your life and caring for your children.
And significantly, the IRS will continue this work of distributing money, as it did with the stimulus payments. Perhaps we are witnessing another shift: If the IRS could collect the money owed by the very, very rich, it could become a more philanthropic body for the poor.
Can we keep going? Can we demand a floor on poverty for the children who go into adulthood without parents to support them, those who are aging out of the foster care system? Too many people who land on the streets could have used that floor in early adulthood.
Can we, in fact, say that no one should be extremely poor?
Can we insist that those who live on that cold concrete with blankets, tarps and tents, those of whom Peter writes, have a guaranteed income too
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And now Biden is introducing a massive transportation infrastructure package this week. The more we can build an economy that’s based on good jobs that do the work of a better society — ones that, for example, reduce dependence on the fossil fuels, which will worsen poverty through climate disasters — the more we are shifting from the cruelness of past policies
As it is, Peter’s poem describes the current state of affairs. To begin to see what could be, I need to read it backward, ending with his first lines:
I had a warm and cozy bubble, bright and blue
Enclosed in glass above the park and cityscape
Skyscrapers, glass and trees, I had a perfect view
I had a cat with white fur and perfect face
I had a glass topped table and a blue glass vase
As the poem continues, the “bright blue bubble burst,” resulting in survival on the streets. This is the federal policy of recent decades. Please take a minute to hear Peter recite his poem.
Thanks to Oregon Humanities for the grant that funded this poetry project, including stipends for the poets’ labor.
But as you listen, latch onto that description of Peter’s safe place, that “warm and cozy bubble, bright and blue.”
Imagine a federal policy that ensures this stanza is where the poem ends.
Director's Desk is written by Kaia Sand, the executive director of Street Roots. You can reach her at kaia@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @mkaiasand
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly publication focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
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