But many of its proponents call it a success because it resulted in additional numbers of poor adults getting jobs and thereby setting good examples for their children of personal responsibility. In the view of these proponents, a country where more parents take responsibility to provide for their children is worth the collateral damage of a greater number of impoverished children.
Since the 1990s, the Republican view that public assistance should be limited to families with breadwinners has taken firm hold in America. Only now, with the American Rescue Plan -- put into effect during the worst public health crisis in more than a century and one of the fiercest periods of unemployment since World War II -- has that view been rejected in favor of a universal family benefit.
It's too early to know whether this about-face is permanent. The Act's payments will end a year from now unless Congress passes Biden's proposed $3.5 trillion addition. Almost every Senate Democrat has signaled a willingness to go along. But here again, not a single Senate Republican has signed on.
Let's be clear. Mike Lee's Republican Party -- the putative party of "family values" -- doesn't support needy families. It supports a pinched and, in these perilous times, unrealistic view of personal responsibility -- children be damned.
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