Do Republicans hate poor children?

Congressional leaders and the Trump administration taking aim at the programs that address child poverty.

Children in the United States are more likely to be hungry or living with housing instability than kids in any other democracy with a market-based economy. According to the Confronting Poverty project, more children are poor in the U.S. than in both our North American neighbors, Canada and Mexico.

Photo by note thanun on Unsplash

Many of the U.S. programs designed to alleviate childhood poverty are now under threat by the Trump administration. While 11 million of the 74 million children in the United States live in poverty, that number will get worse if programs like TANF, Medicaid, SNAP, school lunches and the Child Tax Credit are cut.

Why should you care, if your children are not hungry or housing insecure? These anti-poverty programs are designed to help the whole country, not just poor people.

According to the Children’s Defense Fund, “Growing up in poverty has wide-ranging, sometimes lifelong, effects on children, putting them at a much higher risk of experiencing behavioral, social, emotional, and health challenges. Childhood poverty also plays an instrumental role in impairing a child’s ability and capacity to learn, build skills, and succeed academically.”

Multiple studies have found cash support for low-income families and programs like SNAP or food stamps have a lasting impact on health, education and emotional well being, according to the Brookings Institution.

Our society needs well educated young people to build the economy and do the work, from teaching in our public school classrooms to running corporations.

Cash assistance

In response to the pandemic, Congress increased the Child Tax Credit in 2021 to help struggling families. The program definitely helped those families but it also provided government officials and social scientists with live research data on the impact of cash assistance on families living in poverty.

Not technically an anti-poverty program, the Child Tax Credit is a federal income tax break for families supporting children under 17. The family income cut off is $200,000 or $400,000 for couples filing jointly – so definitely above the poverty level – but low income families that don’t usually file a federal tax return may still be able to receive the credit.

During the pandemic, the $2,000 per child credit was temporarily increased as part of the American Rescue Plan to a fully refundable $3,600 per child through age 5 and $3,000 per child between 6 and 17 years old. The credit had previously been only refundable as a portion of a family’s tax liability.

The anti-poverty impact or this temporary increase was dramatic. The child poverty rate dropped to 5.2% in 2021 and then doubled again in 2022 when the one-year increase ended and the credit returned to $2,000.

The program, which currently costs the federal budget just under $120 billion, could be cut again to a $1,000 credit, as it stood before 2017, if a temporary increase passed that year is allowed to expire in 2026.

The nation’s more direct financial aid to families is called TANF or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. The states run this program with federal block-grant dollars. TANF provides $16.6 billion a year to states, territories, the District of Columbia, and federally-recognized Indian tribes, to help an estimated one million families. The Trump administration sent a letter to the states in March ordering them to make sure none of those benefits were going to immigrants without official permission to be in the United States.

SNAP or food stamps

Low income families can also benefit from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, which helps feed more than 42 million Americans, and is on Trump’s budget cutting radar. Republicans seeking to cut $230 billion from the U.S. Agriculture Department budget over the next decade have focused on SNAP benefits. Some states are also looking at changing what families can buy with their SNAP grants.

Researchers believe SNAP budgets do more than just reduce food insecurity for children. The money decreases poverty in general because it frees up funds for housing and other needs. The program also improves health outcomes for children and their families.

The No Kid Hungry campaign found families with SNAP benefits in their budgets can make the difference between living in poverty or not. A 2021 analysis showed SNAP kept almost 8 million people above the poverty line prior to the pandemic, including 3.6 million children.

School lunch

The National School Lunch Program, another way the federal government helps alleviate child poverty, is also being threatened by the Trump administration. The USDA recently cut $1 billion from a program that helps food banks and schools buy local food, including fresh vegetables and dairy. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins described the programs as “nonessential.”

Free and reduced-priced school lunches provided 4.6 billion meals in fiscal 2023 at a total cost of $17.2 billion. Those dollars were supplemented by the local food program. A program within the school lunch system allows high-poverty schools to offer free breakfast and lunch to all students, not just the ones living in poverty. During the pandemic, lunches were free to all, when school was in session.

Medicaid

House Democrats are fighting this week to stop proposed Republican budget cuts to the national health insurance program known as Medicaid. It’s another anti-poverty program that is funded by a federal block grant to the states. Medicaid was expanded as part of the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare.

One in five Americans – or 70 million people – are covered by Medicaid, including 40% of all U.S. children. Medicaid is the largest healthcare insurance program in the country. Eligibility varies by state, but at minimum all children through age 18 in families with incomes at or below 133% of the federal poverty level are covered.

Millions have lost their coverage in the past year as the federal government resumed eligibility checks post-COVID. But advocates believe some people, including children were incorrectly knocked out of the program and may still be eligible. This effort to clean up Medicaid enrollment might continue to cut eligibility. And the congressional budget plan for further cuts could take insurance away from even more.

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