Liberty Expose: What Child Benefits Mean For America

MoMo Productions

The Current Perplexity in American Democracy 

It has been an unsettling year for American democracy—both in terms of the human cost endured and the symbolic traumas that have decentered the nation’s imagination. 

First, the global pandemic has eventuated a degree of human loss beyond all expectations and exasperated the economic insecurity of some of our most vulnerable populations, particularly low-income families with children. Burnout among medical professionals due to the pandemic has increased to a significant degree, as have anxiety and depression in the general population. Even amidst promising advancement in vaccine distribution and the welcome arrival of spring’s rejuvenation, the specter of contagion continues to cast a shadow over the nation’s confidence and diminish the bonds of felt connection among our fellows. Faith in collective intelligence—both as the vehicle of humanity’s mastery of nature and the foundational creed of democracy—finds itself in a period of recession, perhaps necessarily so. 

These dynamics are more or less general in character. The archetypal experience of the plague envelops all of humanity, which retains a collective memory of diseases long past. To face such an invisible threat, and at that, one that isolates us from the solidarity of our companions, is to unsettle an ancient nerve in our being. 

Moreover, the creed of collective intelligence, which has not been challenged in any fundamental way since the threat of thermonuclear disaster during the Cold War (and only gets checked intermittently by warnings of climate change), remains a common hope among all aspiring democracies. Yet this faith balks at not only the elusive peculiarities of the virus, but also the slow response of our federal administration, the confusing politicization of basic mitigating practices, and the glaring limits of our healthcare system—not to mention the yet obscure origins of the virus itself.  It is therefore no wonder that the past year, which unsettles both the primal and the political aspects of our identity, has contained an element of unreality in it, as if the train of life itself has been arrested. 

However, if we consider these general experiences alongside two other characteristic developments from the previous year, they reveal a more distinct American character. First, the previous year saw the conflagration of long overdue issues surrounding police misconduct and racial justice, and in consequence, an unprecedented resurgence of peaceful Black Lives Matter protests that have challenged the nation’s moral imagination. While every attempt has been made to obfuscate BLM’s aims, or to deny its moral legitimacy, it has initiated a moral reckoning in the nation that, despite the scope of its challenge to the status quo, has resonated with a majority of Americans. This marks a tentative step forward in America’s long quest to redeem its promise of justice and equality for all, despite the evils of its past and present. 

Furthermore, the start of this year saw the President incite an insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, a historic impeachment trial, and the acquittal of that President nearly along party lines. The ironies revealed by this series of events mark a critical moment in the history of American democracy: either as prophetic images of American democracy’s future disintegration, or as guideposts that point out the contradictions we must resolve to save the promise of our country. 

Thus, in the background of public life, uncertainty mingles with hopeful expectation as the new administration begins its opening moves amidst all of the dangers, and opportunities, afforded by crisis. 

The Moral Significance of Child Benefits: A Prelude To The Next American Republic 

America’s ability to reinvent itself through crisis proves to be one of its greatest strengths and one of its greatest embarrassments. The most significant, paradigm-altering revolutions in American history—the ones that truly updated our institutions for a new economic reality, while simultaneously expanding the meaning of the American social contract—were both forged in the crucible of radical national crises (namely, the Civil War, and the era encompassing the Great Depression and WWII). 

However, dependence on crisis for change is not becoming of a great people, but rather a mark of the relative immaturity of our democracy. To adapt under such circumstances may prove something about the gutsy adaptability of our institutions and our occasional willingness to cooperate when the chips are down, but the obvious human cost of such an approach, as well as its inherent unreliability, should make us pause. The redemption of our national promise will eventually require our transcendence of this self-incurred immaturity, and there is no telling how many times we can repeat this gutsy method successfully. 

That being said, federal energy during a crisis is better than no energy at all. For all of the lethargy in our federal response this past year, we have seen a number of large spending bills aimed at slowing economic freefall and mitigating existential precarity, whether through direct checks, expanded unemployment benefits, or attempts to halt evictions (although this has been poorly executed). 

Perhaps the most significant development to come out of these efforts on the level of principle has been increased legitimation of direct cash benefits—a measure championed by the presidential and mayoral candidacies of Andrew Yang, and still being piloted in a number of cities. Amidst a crisis that has hit our greatest pressure points—a healthcare system tied to employment, and increasing economic precarity for a marginalized working class unable to reap the gains of the emerging economy—cash benefits have presented themselves as agile, simple solutions that simultaneously help folks address their own needs while avoiding excessive paternalism and bureaucratic overreach. At once progressive and conservative in the truest sense of the terms, UBI and its relatives point in the direction of the Fourth American Republic: one characterized by the liberation of human capital through non-paternalistic compassion and flexible self-reliance. 

While these developments merely anticipate the full revolution of universal basic income, they complement recent embraces of direct child care provisions, from Senator Romney’s proposed Family Security Act, to the monumental American Rescue Plan passed this week, which grants families $3600 for each child under 6, and $3000 for each child from 6 to 17. This will provide invaluable support to families struggling to get by, and in particular, the nearly 11 million children who live in poverty.  

Though limited to the 2021 tax year, the American Rescue Plan’s Child Tax Credit marks a partial answer to the national crises we’ve experienced this year, and a hopeful prelude for the future of our politics. As things stand, our government remains tied to the old habit of relying on crisis to activate its greatest energies; yet even so, it is encouraging that we pass the most basic litmus test of an aspiring democracy, namely helping families with children through a catastrophic downturn. Should benefits of this sort become perpetual, and child benefits become an addition to the American social contract, we might see the eventual end of child poverty and the partial redemption of this year’s crises through the triumph of a great principle.  

We must take this obvious advance and the principles it embodies as stepping stones in a much grander development in our nation’s history.