At first glance, it looks like another New York Times story about all those public policy debates between the entrenched Republicans and White House, along with the narrow Democratic majorities on Capitol Hill.
But if you look carefully, there is a reason that this Gray Lady update about the arrival of the expanded Child Tax Credit was, to use a turn of phrase from “Crossroads” host Todd Wilken, a “haunted house” of religion-news ghosts. He was riffing on a term your GetReligionistas have used since Day 1 at this blog. (Click here to tune in this week’s GetReligion podcast.)
OK, let’s play “spot the religion ghost.” First, here is the double-decker headline on this report:
Monthly Payments to Families With Children to Begin
The Biden administration will send up to $300 per child a month to most American families thanks to a temporary increase in the child tax credit that advocates hope to extend.
Nine out of 10 children in the United States will be eligible for these payments, which are linked to the COVID-19 crisis, but call back memories of policies from the old War on Poverty. The program will expire in a year, at which point the debates over its effectiveness will crank into a higher gear. Here’s the Times overture:
WASHINGTON — If all goes as planned, the Treasury Department will begin making a series of monthly payments in coming days to families with children, setting a milestone in social policy and intensifying a debate over whether to make the subsidies a permanent part of the American safety net.
With all but the most affluent families eligible to receive up to $300 a month per child, the United States will join many other rich countries that provide a guaranteed income for children, a goal that has long animated progressives. Experts estimate the payments will cut child poverty by nearly half, an achievement with no precedent. …
While the government has increased many aid programs during the coronavirus pandemic, supporters say the payments from an expanded Child Tax Credit, at a one-year cost of about $105 billion, are unique in their potential to stabilize both poor and middle-class families.
As you would expect, many Republicans oppose what they consider a return to old-style “welfare” payments of this kind.
That’s many Republicans, but not all.