Mitt Romney’s Family Plan and the Death of D.C. Dealmaking – By Peter Nicholas (The Atlantic) / May 24 2021
President Joe Biden’s chief of staff called the Republican senator’s plan “encouraging.” So why does it seem to be dead on arrival?
Republicans aren’t exactly pumping out fresh policy innovations these days. If anything motivates congressional Republicans, it’s retaking the majority in 2022 and placating the put-upon ex-president Donald Trump. “One hundred percent of my focus is standing up to this administration,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said earlier this month, succinctly capturing the spirit on Capitol Hill.
All the more reason that Senator Mitt Romney’s plan to send cash straight to parents raising children is such an anomaly. If you missed Romney’s proposal, that’s no surprise. He released it February 4, the day after House Republicans voted to retain Liz Cheney as the caucus’s third-ranking member despite her apostasy of condemning Trump (a vote of confidence that didn’t stick; Republicans booted her out three months later). The House civil war saturated the news, but it’s not every day that a Republican who’d once been a presidential nominee touts an idea that breaks decisively with party orthodoxy, and, on top of that, invites a Democratic president to solve a problem through that quaint old practice: bipartisan collaboration. At first the White House seemed intrigued. The day Romney released his proposal, President Joe Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, sent a tweet calling the idea “an encouraging sign that bipartisan action to reduce child poverty IS possible.” So why is it stalled?
Romney’s Family Security Act is simple in its design. It provides an annual cash payment totaling $4,200 for households with children up to age 5, and $3,000 for those with kids ages 6 to 17. It tops out at $15,000 a year. Biden has a more expansive plan that shares one important goal with Romney’s: getting money directly to households with kids. They go about it a bit differently, with Biden proposing in his American Families Plan to extend a beefed-up child tax credit until 2025. The benefit is worth $3,600 a year for households with children younger than 6; and $3,000 for older children up to 17. Neither plan requires that parents work in order to receive the money.
CONTINUE > https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/05/mitt-romney-child-tax-credit/618955/
