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While it is encouraging to see a group of Republican senators engage on a #COVIDrelief package, the proposal those Senators released falls short of meeting the nation’s needs in key areas.
With 15 million renters behind on rent – including over 1 in 3 Black renters, over 1 in 4 Latino renters, and nearly 1 in 3 renters with children – the Senate Republican plan provides no additional rental assistance funding.
The year-end relief legislation included critical aid to help a fraction of these renters pay rent, but isn’t enough to stop a wave of evictions when eviction moratoriums end.
Under the Republican plan, critical unemployment provisions are only extended from mid-March to the end of June, rather than through September under the Biden American Rescue Plan.
While we expect jobs to come back as the health crisis abates, for many people, particularly workers without college degrees and Black workers, who tend to benefit last from a recovering economy, unemployment is likely to remain high well past early summer https://www.cbpp.org/research/economy/jobs-recovery-stalled-in-december-highlighting-importance-of-further-relief-and
Threatening another too-early cutoff of jobless benefits creates uncertainty for workers and their families whose jobs haven’t come back yet.
The Senate Republican plan lacks any provisions to expand health coverage. Helping more people afford Marketplace coverage and helping states that have not yet expanded Medicaid afford to do so could expand coverage at a moment when access to coverage is critical.
Expanding coverage temporarily would also be a bridge to a more equitable future when far more people have access to quality coverage they can afford, and the Republican plan fails to take this opportunity.
The plan lacks any broad-based aid for states, localities, tribes and territories – and has insufficient $ for schools - despite revenue shortfalls due to the economic crisis and higher costs due to the pandemic, including the need to address learning loss.
States/localities have cut 1.4 million jobs since February 2020 and shed 50k jobs in December. Without help, they will take steps that will cut needed services and weaken the recovery.
Unlike the Biden plan and past House bills, the Republican plan doesn’t expand the Child Tax Credit and EITC. These expansions would provide timely help to many households and would be a down payment on an equitable recovery: https://www.cbpp.org/blog/president-elects-plan-includes-vital-eitc-increase-for-adults-not-raising-children
https://www.cbpp.org/blog/biden-harris-child-tax-credit-expansion-would-lift-10-million-children-above-or-closer-to
https://www.cbpp.org/blog/biden-harris-child-tax-credit-expansion-would-lift-10-million-children-above-or-closer-to
Currently 27M children, roughly half Black and Latino children, don’t get the full Child Tax Credit because their families’ incomes are too low – and 5.8M workers without kids are taxed into or deeper into poverty because the EITC for this group is so small.
With households with children facing high levels of food and housing hardship & low-paid workers seeing employment losses and the stress of working in essential jobs during a pandemic, it is time to address these inequities in our tax code.
Given the current economic environment, the continued health toll from the pandemic, and the high levels of hardship households are experiencing, swift and bold action is imperative: https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/tracking-the-covid-19-recessions-effects-on-food-housing-and
