Not mentioned is that absent immigration, US population would now be declining because birth rates are down. The cost of raising a child is one factor.
Declining population brings with it a host of problems. Not least of which is that the next generation needs to make the SS and Medicare payments.
It certainly makes sense to help offset the costs of raising those kids. I would also add that if you are going to means test, it should be related to what state you live in.
$100k a year might be decent in Alabama, but you are struggling in much of CA, NY etc
First, there is the principle of solidarity. The child tax credit needs to support and strengthen the idea that we are all in a community together, that all our children are important. Means-testing works against that. It sends the idea that children with well-off parents don’t really belong to the community, that they aren't worthy of help. Even if the credit is mostly taxed away, even if it’s worth only a few thousand dollars, it’s very important that the credit be universal for all children. I would happily see the Walton grandchildren get child tax credits just for that reason.
Second, the concentrated financial burden of raising children can be a strain even for well-off parents. Like Social Security, the child tax credit is inherently designed to redistribute funds between people in different phases of life. Older people help parents, who then grow into older people who help other parents. Parents put in a lot of work and care to ensure that there is a new generation to support older people. Social policy should give help and recognition for that.
This all goes beyond the (I would say, “narrow”) progressive goal of “ending childhood poverty” but has much broader benefits and strengthens our society up and down the scale, whereas the means-tested version almost certainly will do the opposite.
Trump is probably undervalued here. Biden is having a tough week. After 3 years of gridlock, he will have the legacy of the 2020/2021 stimulus bills and soaring wage gains.
The poll numbers Bazelon and Shor present are interesting: basically, CTC expansion is not that popular, no matter the threshold set. I agree with Kevin Drum who says that any policy initiative that scores less than 60% (I think that's the number) won't be able to count on public support in the end. I'm sure most of the people polled had either never heard of the CTC expansion or had barely given it any thought before, so the pollsters were just capturing their snap judgment. That judgment could easily change with more thought and, especially, with more exposure in the media they follow.
Would their support increase? Maybe, but I doubt it. The American people are generally conservative (in that they resist new governmental policies) and would be susceptible to arguments that our debt is too high, [their] taxes would go up, undeserving people wouldn't have to work, Bill Gates would get it etc etc. Countering that with it being good to eliminate child poverty just seems a little wan, comparatively speaking. IOW, support would go down from its already low number.
Any final bill will be way below $3.5T. Something will have to go. With numbers like these, this seems like a good candidate. Then go out and win more elections, build the public case better, and try again later.
I think Kevin Drum's theory is when looking at a "normal" poll e.g. not one that gives pro and con arguments. Because his theory is that the con arguments are what drag the number down below 50%.
I am not sure if I trust the polling numbers. Here is my calculus... people without kids are like... eh... I don't support it that strongly. People with kids are like, fuck yeah.
It's hard for me to picture a scenario where they remove anybody from getting it that gets it now.
This kind of motivated reasoning is why democrats lose elections. We have a 50/50 issue where people losing benefits will clearly care more than everyone else.
What is the expected % of childless, cross-over voters that will even know what the CTC threshold is on election day?
What is the expected % of parents who lose CTC that will know what the threshold is?
So, you’ve convinced me a means tested CTC is more popular right now. However, it may be the case that a universal (or closer to universal) CTC will be more popular in the long run after it is enacted.
As middle class people start receiving the credit, seeing its benefits, and taking it for granted, I think the politics might shift and make it more popular than it polls right now. Even those without minor children will see how it benefits friends and family with minor children, and they too would become lore supportive.
Plus, I think a broader program will be much more politically difficult for Republicans to repeal, because more people will be so materially invested in it that they’ll be willing to change their vote over this issue alone. Whereas, even if a highly mean tested CTC is Kyle popular, it will not have a huge constituency who will fight for it to that extent: fewer people will benefit from it and the beneficiaries will be the poor, who are politically disorganized and not viewed sympathetically by GOP politicians.
Democrats want to cut the number of dollars spent on this program to fit some target. They can either do it by limiting it in years, or by means testing it. Currently they plan on a short time limit and a high means test. A long time limit and a low means test would hit the same price target. There is a strong argument that a long time limit is better, because it makes the program hard to cancel, rather than let expire. The lower means test also happens to make it more popular, rather than less popular.
If you’re right that the program becomes more popular once it’s in effect, then maybe the means test can be raised later. But it’s better to have that debate than to start with the high means test and then have the debate about letting it expire (which can happen just because no agreement is reached).
There seems to be a balance between getting enough of the population enjoying the benefit AND for long enough to feel like losing it would be outrageous. Want to make sure you thread the needle for both of those. Means test to strictly and you don't get enough people. Don't get in place long enough and people will think it was just part of the covid stimulus and not a long term thing.
Yeah, I think that this gets at a key consideration- visibility to voters.
It's true that a short program with no means test is actuarily identical to a long program with a low means test threshold, but if your theory of enactment is that people will see the program benefits and push to extend them (or get angry about ending them) there is obviously a premium on making sure as many people get the benefits in hand as as possible.
The key problem with Shor's argument is that he assumes that the CTC is abstractly great and that the key problem is preventing Republicans from stripping it away in the future. While I agree that the CTC is great, the thing that will keep the CTC around in the future is many people agreeing that it is in fact great, and not tea leaf reading about who might control congress in 4 years.
If the Republicans control congress in 4 years it's likely that they will try to eliminate a lot of programs, including but not limited to the CTC. At that time the only thing keeping the CTC in place will be the pain that Republicans think they will incur by getting rid of it.
I'm less certain Republicans won't act to save it in some form. The CTC seems like its the kind of spending that Republicans would actually get behind - especially if they can market it as really just a tax cut. Its probably more beneficial to their constituents and I suspect popular with them.
What strikes me is how little difference there is between means testing with a threshold of $150k and no means testing at all. It doesn't really make any sense on paper to introduce a means test to withhold benefits from ~10% of the population and introduce an administrative burden for the eligible 90%, and the public seems to agree.
Additional marginal tax rate on middle income folks who are more likely to be sensitive to the work/no work decision due to childcare costs seems counter productive. You'd also lose sympathy from the center right politicians who simply want to subsidize families. The current cut offs make more sense.
If you make the phase out gradual enough, you don’t get this effect - and a graduated phase out from $50-90,000 saves a similar amount to a sharp cutoff at $70,000.
I don’t understand why the payments can’t just be universal initially, and then have them clawed back when you do your tax return if your above a certain income threshold. You could give people the option to “opt out” of receiving the payments in advance if they think it’s going to be clawed back anyway, which would be equivalent to just withholding 100%. Then if they ended up being eligible, it would flow through in their YE tax refund.
Shor is saying that if the payments are universal initially, that's less popular than if they're means-tested to $50k/year income. I think a clawback scheme would just complicate things for voters compared to "you get this benefit if you're poor or lower middle class".
Maybe, but it shifts the administrative burden on filling out paperwork from poorer people to people who make more if the default configuration is “you get this money” and then, conditionally, “if you make more you might have to give it back.”
I’m talking more specifically about the mechanics of payment. Instead of proving your eligible to start receiving payments, which causes administrative burdens and less than 100% take up from eligible populations, you just give it to everyone and claw it back from those who you deem “make too much” through the tax system. It just seems like a mechanically better way to do the means testing, administered entirely through an existing system. While marginal tax rates aren’t 100% at any point, we do mechanically the same thing with social security (government sends money out, then ask for different amounts back based on the recipients other taxable income)
Absent a sense of what’s particular level of means testing would cut, popularity doesn’t seem all that compelling of an argument. If means testing at $50k shaves off $100 billion over 10 years, what are we even going for?
I think the point is that we have two choices to save half the cost over the ten year budget window - make it sunset in five years instead of being permanent, or means test it at $X. If means testing makes it *more* popular rather than less, then that’s the way to do it, so we both avoid the later fight and make the current fight easier.
>>Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation proposal is almost certainly going to shrink — and possibly shrink a lot<<
At this point, such a sentence to my ears sounds positively optimistic. So, do Bazelon/Shor believe a (smaller) reconciliation bill actually will get to Biden's desk?
I also wonder about the prospects for the beefed up ACA credits provision. That's one I'd like to see survive.
I don't see why Democrats feel such an intense need to pass everything on the list this year. Rather than cut all of their reconciliation items by 60% and half ass everything, wouldn't it be better to pick a priority (climate change? anti-poverty? seniors?) and put everything you want in there offset by a 25% corporate tax rate?
I just feel like that would be easier to message and better policy than whatever they are doing now. Presumably Democrats will win another election in the future, maybe even by better margins, and can then go back and do 2 year community college or whatever.
I totally agree. The country is just too deeply and evenly split to believe it is ready to pass and accept this level of aggressive new policy. We can get as angry at Joe Manchin as we want but I suspect he's a helluva lot closer to MY's Post-It voter than we are.
Let's not be surprised that we can't get everything we dream of with our nanometer-wide majority. Let's get what's reasonable and work toward building a stronger majority. Politics is a long, unending game.
Passing stuff in an election year is really, really hard. And the filibuster forces you to put everything in a single bill instead of breaking things up.
I think a lot of Dems are assuming they'll lose the House in '22 and won't have unified government control again for at least 6 years. I agree with you and would do just the CTC, negotiating prescription drugs and maybe one other item.
Tbh isn't this reconciliation stuff really only like half the Biden agenda? So I guess the hope is to pass this half now and then some more next year (before we lose the House and get stuck with a do-nothing presidency between then and 2024)
Yeah but it seems pretty clear that Biden & Bernie were a little overambitious in their "agenda" the context of their slim majorities - I am operating under the assumption that they can't pass the $3.5 trillion bill and will have to cut somewhere. In that situation I'd rather they preserve a portion of the bill intact than cut across the board.
What percent of the 30m are here illegally, though? It's gotta be sizeable (and yes that also means quite a few million citizens are uninsured, which is very bad)
The denominator bounces around across all these studies. That HHS study doesn't specify; it's just "U.S. residents". This KFF one says 23% of the uninsured are "non-citizens" so 21M US citizens would be the uninsured population. Skewed heavily by states that haven't expanded Medicare.
Unpopular/contrarian opinion- when emergency rooms are mandated by federal law to treat people regardless of insurance status or ability to pay- really no one is uninsured? If your income or assets are low enough, they're not going to bother to collect.
A guy I went to high school with crashed his car while messed up on All The Drugs- he's low income and uninsured. He racked up at least a $200k hospital bill while intubated for several days, where they were mandated to treat him, and ultimately ended up paying nothing as he has no assets. How..... how is that not insurance? If I had done the same thing it would've been vastly more expensive
I'm all for unpopular opinions but this one is too far for me. I think we have enough research to prove uninsured Americans have far worse health outcomes. There's a book out there sub-titled ... "Too little, too late". Emergency room care for catastrophic injury is just not good enough.
"I think we have enough research to prove uninsured Americans have far worse health outcomes"
Actually giving people coverage didn't improve health outcomes. They did a randomized study in Oregon
"This randomized, controlled study showed that Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in measured physical health outcomes in the first 2 years, but it did increase use of health care services"
Because emergency care isn't the only type of care. Your high-school buddy wouldn't be covered for cancer treatment or any kind of regular checkups or screenings. Also he presumably had to declare bankruptcy to get out of that $200k, right?
Not my buddy, just an acquaintance. No, you don't have to declare bankruptcy- presumably the hospital understands it can't blood out of a stone (a repeat criminal with a spotty work history).
How about- all Americans have baseline catastrophic emergency room insurance, for essentially free? Would that be wrong to say?
Yes, it would. Having to face off with a hospital billing department is not "free"--it carries administrative costs, risks of medical bankruptcy, etc etc
Can democrats possibly hold the ctc hostage, in order to get people to get vaccinated. Somehow use this as an improptu vaccine mandate?
Not mentioned is that absent immigration, US population would now be declining because birth rates are down. The cost of raising a child is one factor.
Declining population brings with it a host of problems. Not least of which is that the next generation needs to make the SS and Medicare payments.
It certainly makes sense to help offset the costs of raising those kids. I would also add that if you are going to means test, it should be related to what state you live in.
$100k a year might be decent in Alabama, but you are struggling in much of CA, NY etc
Matt Bruenig would very much disagree with you .... https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2021/09/28/a-sharper-ctc-means-test-would-make-the-program-way-less-popular/?fbclid=IwAR2A72yCCqBVZa-9CVTua43CUzJreLXnnZAoaV6fjAa5ri-CQ51EXQHzx4g
There are two problems with this argument.
First, there is the principle of solidarity. The child tax credit needs to support and strengthen the idea that we are all in a community together, that all our children are important. Means-testing works against that. It sends the idea that children with well-off parents don’t really belong to the community, that they aren't worthy of help. Even if the credit is mostly taxed away, even if it’s worth only a few thousand dollars, it’s very important that the credit be universal for all children. I would happily see the Walton grandchildren get child tax credits just for that reason.
Second, the concentrated financial burden of raising children can be a strain even for well-off parents. Like Social Security, the child tax credit is inherently designed to redistribute funds between people in different phases of life. Older people help parents, who then grow into older people who help other parents. Parents put in a lot of work and care to ensure that there is a new generation to support older people. Social policy should give help and recognition for that.
This all goes beyond the (I would say, “narrow”) progressive goal of “ending childhood poverty” but has much broader benefits and strengthens our society up and down the scale, whereas the means-tested version almost certainly will do the opposite.
Trump is probably undervalued here. Biden is having a tough week. After 3 years of gridlock, he will have the legacy of the 2020/2021 stimulus bills and soaring wage gains.
https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/7456/Who-will-win-the-2024-US-presidential-election
David Shor at Slow Boring is the chocolate in the Matt Yglesias peanut butter!
The poll numbers Bazelon and Shor present are interesting: basically, CTC expansion is not that popular, no matter the threshold set. I agree with Kevin Drum who says that any policy initiative that scores less than 60% (I think that's the number) won't be able to count on public support in the end. I'm sure most of the people polled had either never heard of the CTC expansion or had barely given it any thought before, so the pollsters were just capturing their snap judgment. That judgment could easily change with more thought and, especially, with more exposure in the media they follow.
Would their support increase? Maybe, but I doubt it. The American people are generally conservative (in that they resist new governmental policies) and would be susceptible to arguments that our debt is too high, [their] taxes would go up, undeserving people wouldn't have to work, Bill Gates would get it etc etc. Countering that with it being good to eliminate child poverty just seems a little wan, comparatively speaking. IOW, support would go down from its already low number.
Any final bill will be way below $3.5T. Something will have to go. With numbers like these, this seems like a good candidate. Then go out and win more elections, build the public case better, and try again later.
I think Kevin Drum's theory is when looking at a "normal" poll e.g. not one that gives pro and con arguments. Because his theory is that the con arguments are what drag the number down below 50%.
I am not sure if I trust the polling numbers. Here is my calculus... people without kids are like... eh... I don't support it that strongly. People with kids are like, fuck yeah.
It's hard for me to picture a scenario where they remove anybody from getting it that gets it now.
I would be pissed off!
This kind of motivated reasoning is why democrats lose elections. We have a 50/50 issue where people losing benefits will clearly care more than everyone else.
What is the expected % of childless, cross-over voters that will even know what the CTC threshold is on election day?
What is the expected % of parents who lose CTC that will know what the threshold is?
So, you’ve convinced me a means tested CTC is more popular right now. However, it may be the case that a universal (or closer to universal) CTC will be more popular in the long run after it is enacted.
As middle class people start receiving the credit, seeing its benefits, and taking it for granted, I think the politics might shift and make it more popular than it polls right now. Even those without minor children will see how it benefits friends and family with minor children, and they too would become lore supportive.
Plus, I think a broader program will be much more politically difficult for Republicans to repeal, because more people will be so materially invested in it that they’ll be willing to change their vote over this issue alone. Whereas, even if a highly mean tested CTC is Kyle popular, it will not have a huge constituency who will fight for it to that extent: fewer people will benefit from it and the beneficiaries will be the poor, who are politically disorganized and not viewed sympathetically by GOP politicians.
I think the overall argument is like this:
Democrats want to cut the number of dollars spent on this program to fit some target. They can either do it by limiting it in years, or by means testing it. Currently they plan on a short time limit and a high means test. A long time limit and a low means test would hit the same price target. There is a strong argument that a long time limit is better, because it makes the program hard to cancel, rather than let expire. The lower means test also happens to make it more popular, rather than less popular.
If you’re right that the program becomes more popular once it’s in effect, then maybe the means test can be raised later. But it’s better to have that debate than to start with the high means test and then have the debate about letting it expire (which can happen just because no agreement is reached).
There seems to be a balance between getting enough of the population enjoying the benefit AND for long enough to feel like losing it would be outrageous. Want to make sure you thread the needle for both of those. Means test to strictly and you don't get enough people. Don't get in place long enough and people will think it was just part of the covid stimulus and not a long term thing.
Yeah, I think that this gets at a key consideration- visibility to voters.
It's true that a short program with no means test is actuarily identical to a long program with a low means test threshold, but if your theory of enactment is that people will see the program benefits and push to extend them (or get angry about ending them) there is obviously a premium on making sure as many people get the benefits in hand as as possible.
The key problem with Shor's argument is that he assumes that the CTC is abstractly great and that the key problem is preventing Republicans from stripping it away in the future. While I agree that the CTC is great, the thing that will keep the CTC around in the future is many people agreeing that it is in fact great, and not tea leaf reading about who might control congress in 4 years.
If the Republicans control congress in 4 years it's likely that they will try to eliminate a lot of programs, including but not limited to the CTC. At that time the only thing keeping the CTC in place will be the pain that Republicans think they will incur by getting rid of it.
I'm less certain Republicans won't act to save it in some form. The CTC seems like its the kind of spending that Republicans would actually get behind - especially if they can market it as really just a tax cut. Its probably more beneficial to their constituents and I suspect popular with them.
Ah, ignore the autocorrect errors, I did this from my phone.
Does this proposed means testing idea actually lower what parents were receiving in 2019 or does this just effect the expanded portion from 2021?
What strikes me is how little difference there is between means testing with a threshold of $150k and no means testing at all. It doesn't really make any sense on paper to introduce a means test to withhold benefits from ~10% of the population and introduce an administrative burden for the eligible 90%, and the public seems to agree.
Additional marginal tax rate on middle income folks who are more likely to be sensitive to the work/no work decision due to childcare costs seems counter productive. You'd also lose sympathy from the center right politicians who simply want to subsidize families. The current cut offs make more sense.
If you make the phase out gradual enough, you don’t get this effect - and a graduated phase out from $50-90,000 saves a similar amount to a sharp cutoff at $70,000.
I don’t understand why the payments can’t just be universal initially, and then have them clawed back when you do your tax return if your above a certain income threshold. You could give people the option to “opt out” of receiving the payments in advance if they think it’s going to be clawed back anyway, which would be equivalent to just withholding 100%. Then if they ended up being eligible, it would flow through in their YE tax refund.
Shor is saying that if the payments are universal initially, that's less popular than if they're means-tested to $50k/year income. I think a clawback scheme would just complicate things for voters compared to "you get this benefit if you're poor or lower middle class".
Maybe, but it shifts the administrative burden on filling out paperwork from poorer people to people who make more if the default configuration is “you get this money” and then, conditionally, “if you make more you might have to give it back.”
Maybe, but "Great new benefit for families that's tax free for for those making less than X thousand bucks" doesn't seem all that complicated.
I’m talking more specifically about the mechanics of payment. Instead of proving your eligible to start receiving payments, which causes administrative burdens and less than 100% take up from eligible populations, you just give it to everyone and claw it back from those who you deem “make too much” through the tax system. It just seems like a mechanically better way to do the means testing, administered entirely through an existing system. While marginal tax rates aren’t 100% at any point, we do mechanically the same thing with social security (government sends money out, then ask for different amounts back based on the recipients other taxable income)
Absent a sense of what’s particular level of means testing would cut, popularity doesn’t seem all that compelling of an argument. If means testing at $50k shaves off $100 billion over 10 years, what are we even going for?
I think the point is that we have two choices to save half the cost over the ten year budget window - make it sunset in five years instead of being permanent, or means test it at $X. If means testing makes it *more* popular rather than less, then that’s the way to do it, so we both avoid the later fight and make the current fight easier.
>>Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation proposal is almost certainly going to shrink — and possibly shrink a lot<<
At this point, such a sentence to my ears sounds positively optimistic. So, do Bazelon/Shor believe a (smaller) reconciliation bill actually will get to Biden's desk?
I also wonder about the prospects for the beefed up ACA credits provision. That's one I'd like to see survive.
I don't see why Democrats feel such an intense need to pass everything on the list this year. Rather than cut all of their reconciliation items by 60% and half ass everything, wouldn't it be better to pick a priority (climate change? anti-poverty? seniors?) and put everything you want in there offset by a 25% corporate tax rate?
I just feel like that would be easier to message and better policy than whatever they are doing now. Presumably Democrats will win another election in the future, maybe even by better margins, and can then go back and do 2 year community college or whatever.
I totally agree. The country is just too deeply and evenly split to believe it is ready to pass and accept this level of aggressive new policy. We can get as angry at Joe Manchin as we want but I suspect he's a helluva lot closer to MY's Post-It voter than we are.
Let's not be surprised that we can't get everything we dream of with our nanometer-wide majority. Let's get what's reasonable and work toward building a stronger majority. Politics is a long, unending game.
Passing stuff in an election year is really, really hard. And the filibuster forces you to put everything in a single bill instead of breaking things up.
I think a lot of Dems are assuming they'll lose the House in '22 and won't have unified government control again for at least 6 years. I agree with you and would do just the CTC, negotiating prescription drugs and maybe one other item.
"Don’t half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing."
Tbh isn't this reconciliation stuff really only like half the Biden agenda? So I guess the hope is to pass this half now and then some more next year (before we lose the House and get stuck with a do-nothing presidency between then and 2024)
Yeah but it seems pretty clear that Biden & Bernie were a little overambitious in their "agenda" the context of their slim majorities - I am operating under the assumption that they can't pass the $3.5 trillion bill and will have to cut somewhere. In that situation I'd rather they preserve a portion of the bill intact than cut across the board.
Just checked. Yeap. 30m still uninsured. Figured with how little this has been talked about it was solved.
https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/private/pdf/265041/trends-in-the-us-uninsured.pdf
What percent of the 30m are here illegally, though? It's gotta be sizeable (and yes that also means quite a few million citizens are uninsured, which is very bad)
The denominator bounces around across all these studies. That HHS study doesn't specify; it's just "U.S. residents". This KFF one says 23% of the uninsured are "non-citizens" so 21M US citizens would be the uninsured population. Skewed heavily by states that haven't expanded Medicare.
https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/fact-sheet/health-coverage-of-immigrants/
Unpopular/contrarian opinion- when emergency rooms are mandated by federal law to treat people regardless of insurance status or ability to pay- really no one is uninsured? If your income or assets are low enough, they're not going to bother to collect.
A guy I went to high school with crashed his car while messed up on All The Drugs- he's low income and uninsured. He racked up at least a $200k hospital bill while intubated for several days, where they were mandated to treat him, and ultimately ended up paying nothing as he has no assets. How..... how is that not insurance? If I had done the same thing it would've been vastly more expensive
I don't think they treat leukemia or whatnot in the ER.
I'm all for unpopular opinions but this one is too far for me. I think we have enough research to prove uninsured Americans have far worse health outcomes. There's a book out there sub-titled ... "Too little, too late". Emergency room care for catastrophic injury is just not good enough.
"I think we have enough research to prove uninsured Americans have far worse health outcomes"
Actually giving people coverage didn't improve health outcomes. They did a randomized study in Oregon
"This randomized, controlled study showed that Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in measured physical health outcomes in the first 2 years, but it did increase use of health care services"
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1212321
Because emergency care isn't the only type of care. Your high-school buddy wouldn't be covered for cancer treatment or any kind of regular checkups or screenings. Also he presumably had to declare bankruptcy to get out of that $200k, right?
Not my buddy, just an acquaintance. No, you don't have to declare bankruptcy- presumably the hospital understands it can't blood out of a stone (a repeat criminal with a spotty work history).
How about- all Americans have baseline catastrophic emergency room insurance, for essentially free? Would that be wrong to say?
Yes, it would. Having to face off with a hospital billing department is not "free"--it carries administrative costs, risks of medical bankruptcy, etc etc
Tbh the way Biden basically hasn't said a word about his public option plan since getting elected makes me think it's just not going to happen.
Infrastructure?