[Senate Hearing 117-216]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]




                                                        S. Hrg. 117-216

 
        AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN: SHOTS IN ARMS AND MONEY IN POCKETS

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               before the

                              COMMITTEE ON
                   BANKING,HOUSING,AND URBAN AFFAIRS
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                                   ON

EXAMINING WHAT THE AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN HAS MEANT FOR PEOPLE ACROSS THE 
                                COUNTRY

                               __________

                             MARCH 25, 2021

                               __________

  Printed for the use of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban 
                                Affairs
                                
                                
                                
                                
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                Available at: https: //www.govinfo.gov /
                
 
                            ______                       


             U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
 47-084PDF            WASHINGTON : 2022 
                
                
                
                
                


            COMMITTEE ON BANKING, HOUSING, AND URBAN AFFAIRS

                     SHERROD BROWN, Ohio, Chairman

JACK REED, Rhode Island              PATRICK J. TOOMEY, Pennsylvania
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey          RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama
JON TESTER, Montana                  MIKE CRAPO, Idaho
MARK R. WARNER, Virginia             TIM SCOTT, South Carolina
ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts      MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland           THOM TILLIS, North Carolina
CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO, Nevada       JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana
TINA SMITH, Minnesota                BILL HAGERTY, Tennessee
KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona              CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming
JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  JERRY MORAN, Kansas
RAPHAEL WARNOCK, Georgia             KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota
                                     STEVE DAINES, Montana

                     Laura Swanson, Staff Director

                 Brad Grantz, Republican Staff Director

                 Jeremy Hekhuis, Deputy Staff Director

                       Elisha Tuku, Chief Counsel

                 Dan Sullivan, Republican Chief Counsel

                   Elie Greenbaum, Republican Counsel

                      Cameron Ricker, Chief Clerk

                      Shelvin Simmons, IT Director

                    Charles J. Moffat, Hearing Clerk

                                  (ii)


                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                        THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 2021

                                                                   Page

Opening statement of Chairman Brown..............................     1
        Prepared statement.......................................    25

Opening statements, comments, or prepared statements of:
    Senator Toomey...............................................     9
        Prepared statement.......................................    26

                               WITNESSES

Sharon Parrott, President, Center for Budget and Policy 
  Priorities.....................................................     2
    Prepared statement...........................................    27
Amy K. Matsui, Director of Income Security and Senior Counsel, 
  National Women's Law Center....................................     3
    Prepared statement...........................................    39
Rory Cooper, Public School Parent, Fairfax County, Virginia......     4
    Prepared statement...........................................    59
Angela Rachidi, Rowe Scholar, American Enterprise Institute......     6
    Prepared statement...........................................    60

                                 (iii)


        AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN: SHOTS IN ARMS AND MONEY IN POCKETS

                              ----------                              


                        THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 2021

                                       U.S. Senate,
          Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met at 9:57 p.m., via Webex, Hon. Sherrod 
Brown, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.

          OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN SHERROD BROWN

    Chairman Brown. The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, 
and Urban Affairs will come to order.
    Thank you all for joining us. We are starting a couple of 
minutes early.
    Today's witnesses will talk about what the American Rescue 
Plan has meant for people across the country, shots in arms, 
money in families' pockets, children in schools, workers in 
jobs. We will explore how it helps black and brown communities 
hit hardest by the pandemic and left behind by other policies 
for decades.
    Unfortunately, today we have four votes starting at 10:45 
a.m. In order to get to member's questions, I will enter my 
opening statement into the record, as will Ranking Member 
Toomey.
    We have also asked witnesses to shorten their testimony to 
3 minutes. We will strictly enforce the 5-minute rule for 
questions.
    Because the hearing is virtual, a few quick reminders. 
There will be a slight delay before you are displayed on the 
screen when you start speaking. Please click the mute button 
when you are not.
    You should all have a box on your screens labeled clock. 
For all Senators, a 5-minute clock still applies for your 
questions. With 30 seconds remaining, you will hear a bell to 
remind your time is almost expired. It will ring again when 
your time has expired.
    If there is a technology issue, we will move to the next 
witness or Senator until it is resolved.
    To simplify the speaking order process, Senator Toomey and 
I have agreed to go by seniority for this hearing.
    I will introduce today's witnesses. I apologize for the 
shortened introductions.
    Sharon Parrott is President of the Center for Budget and 
Policy Priorities. Amy Matsui is Director of Income Security 
and Senior Counsel at the National Women's Law Center. Roy 
Cooper is the parent of three children and a former staffer for 
Representative Eric Cantor and he lives in Fairfax County, 
Virginia. Dr. Angela Rachidi is the Rowe Scholar at the 
American Enterprise Institute.
    Welcome, and thank you for your testimony today.
    Ms. Parrott, please begin your testimony. Thank you so 
much.

 STATEMENT OF SHARON PARROTT, PRESIDENT, CENTER FOR BUDGET AND 
                       POLICY PRIORITIES

    Ms. Parrott. Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey, Members 
of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify this 
morning.
    I am going to make four points and I will be happy to take 
questions.
    My first point is that, even with today's news that initial 
jobless claims ticked down somewhat, millions of people are out 
of work, hardship remains high, and the current crisis has 
taken a disproportionate toll on people who worked in low-paid 
jobs and low-income households with children.
    Due to the Nation's long history of racism, that has 
resulted in gaping inequities in housing, employment, and 
education. These heavily impacted groups include 
disproportionate numbers of Black and Indigenous people and 
people of color.
    There were 9.5 million fewer payroll jobs last month than 
in February of 2020 and the largest losses are in industries 
that pay low wages. Black and Latino workers are 
disproportionately represented in low-paying industries, which 
is a key reason their unemployment rate is so much higher than 
white unemployment.
    Tens of millions of households are struggling to pay their 
bills. For example, between February 17th and March 1st of this 
year, an estimated 13.5 million adults in rental housing, 
nearly one in five adult renters, reported that they were not 
caught up in rent. And about 22 million adults reported that 
their household sometimes or often did not have enough to eat 
in the last 7 days. Food and housing hardship was highest among 
households of color and households with children.
    My second point is that the rescue plan is providing much 
needed help for tens of millions of people and it is also 
providing important funds for States, territories, localities 
and tribes. It includes housing assistance for millions of 
people struggling to pay rent and avoid eviction, and for 
communities to address homelessness.
    It extends critical unemployment benefit expansions and 
nutrition assistance. It temporarily expands the Child Tax 
Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit, driving an historic 
reduction in poverty and providing much needed support for 
workers.
    It makes comprehensive health coverage more accessible and 
affordable. It helps States, localities, territories and tribes 
with COVID-19 costs and other expenses. It provides a historic 
investment in K-12 education to help address the pandemic's 
impact on schools and on student learning. And it provides 
important funding for operating costs of transit agencies.
    My third point is that we would not have needed so many 
emergency stopgap measures if we had permanent policies that 
provided supports for households that struggle to afford the 
basics, that offered adequate jobless benefits, particularly to 
workers in low-paid jobs, and that insured everyone had access 
to health coverage.
    Other wealthy nations have these kinds of policies in 
place. The United States can do so, as well.
    My fourth point is that the President and the Congress will 
soon have an historic opportunity in recovery legislation to 
make investments that help us build toward a more equitable 
recovery.
    What would that look like? A strong recovery requires the 
pandemic is under control and strong growth. But to be an 
equitable recovery, we also need policies in place that 
dramatically reduce child poverty, that help people in low-pay 
jobs make ends meet, and assist those with few job prospects 
and expands access to health coverage.
    I look forward to working with this Committee and the 
Congress to drive toward that vision of a recovery.
    Thank you.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Ms. Parrott.
    Ms. Matsui, welcome.

STATEMENT OF AMY MATSUI, DIRECTOR OF INCOME SECURITY AND SENIOR 
              COUNSEL, NATIONAL WOMEN'S LAW CENTER

    Ms. Matsui. Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey, and 
members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to 
testify. My testimony today will address the deep racial, 
gender, and economic disparities revealed by the COVID-19 
pandemic and the impact of the American Rescue Plan of 2021 on 
women and families.
    The COVID-19 crisis has laid bare long-standing racial and 
gender inequities. COVID pulled back the curtain on weaknesses 
in our economy, exposing women's overrepresentation in part-
time and low-paid jobs in the service sector. Women make up the 
vast majority of workers risking their lives to provide health 
care, child care, and other essential services for inadequate 
pay.
    The pandemic also revealed women's disproportionate 
responsibility for caregiving, both paid and unpaid. Women's 
undervalued labor held up our fragmented and dysfunctional 
child care, home care and elder care systems and we discovered 
that there is no backup when the backup fails.
    The pandemic's disastrous health and economic consequences 
have disparately fallen on women of color and women more 
generally. Throughout the pandemic, the overall unemployment 
rate has masked devastatingly high rates for Black women, 
Latinas, women with disabilities, and younger women. In 
January, more than 61 million women recorded that their 
household had lost employment income between March 2020 and the 
present, but more than 6 in 10 Latinas and over half of Black 
non-Hispanic women were in such a household.
    Millions are struggling to make basic needs like shelter 
and food, with Black women and Latinas again disproportionately 
represented among them.
    The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 is targeted to help 
the women, communities of color, and families who are 
experiencing the greatest economic distress and provides relief 
at the scale of need.
    I want to highlight several key aspects of the law, among 
many, that will benefit women and families.
    First, the rescue plan provides nearly $50 billion in 
housing and utility assistance, which includes emergency rental 
assistance, housing vouchers, homelessness assistance, nearly 
$10 billion to create a homeowner assistance fund and other 
housing relief, along with housing counseling and fair housing 
activities.
    The bill also provides transit relief funding, which is 
critical for low-paid workers, among whom women are 
overrepresented.
    Second, the rescue plan provides $39 billion in direct 
funding for child care to help stabilize the child care sector 
and help women afford and access the child care they need to 
work.
    Third, the rescue plan made historic, though temporary, 
expansions to the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit 
for low-paid workers not claiming children. These expansions 
will boost the incomes of millions of families and especially 
benefit women of color and children of color.
    These provisions, along with other income supports, 
nutrition assistance, and health care will have a direct impact 
on the lives of women and their families. They will allow their 
families to meet their basic needs and boost the incomes of 
millions above the poverty line. They will mitigate the harm 
that poverty and economic insecurity inflict on children's 
well-being and forestall long-term consequences to women's 
health, employment, education, and lifetime financial security.
    The American Rescue Plan Act addresses the near-term 
consequences of the pandemic. Moving forward, we urge 
policymakers to consider the rescue plan for an equitable 
economic recovery that centers women, communities of color, and 
families with low incomes.
    We cannot accept the pre-COVID status quo as the benchmark 
for recovery, however. Structural changes and significant 
public investments in housing, the care economy, a more 
progressive and equitable tax code, and increased wages are the 
only way forward to sustainable and broadly shared prosperity.
    Thank you for the opportunity to testify today and I look 
forward to answering your questions.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Ms. Matsui.
    Mr. Cooper is recognized for 3 minutes. Thank you.

STATEMENT OF RORY COOPER, PUBLIC SCHOOL PARENT, FAIRFAX COUNTY, 
                            VIRGINIA

    Mr. Cooper. Thank you.
    Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey, and members of the 
Committee, thank you for this opportunity to speak for what I 
believe are millions of parents.
    I have 3 kids currently in 5th grade, 2nd grade, and 
kindergarten, who I love very much. My children, and millions 
of other children, have not had access to the education they 
deserve for over a year.
    President Biden's goal of having a majority of schools open 
to some degree in his first 100 days is incomprehensible. It 
was achieved before he took office.
    A majority of students are indeed attending school in 
person 5 days a week. Two-thirds of public school districts are 
currently open 5 days a week, many of them since the fall.
    The districts that are failing our children are the large 
metropolitan areas where school boards are heavily controlled 
by powerful teacher's unions like New York,
    Chicago, San Francisco, L.A., and Washington, D.C.
    We know schools are safe because not one person is calling 
on the open schools to close. Here in Fairfax County, 
unreasonable union demands, coupled with a flat-footed 
superintendent and school board have crippled what was once a 
premier district. The goal posts keep moving as they run out 
the clock on the school year and leave students behind.
    We were told that teachers needed to be vaccinated first. 
So Virginia put them at the front of the line with health care 
workers and senior citizens. And then, when all willing 
teachers in Fairfax were vaccinated, they still refused to 
fully reopen.
    Then we were told they needed more money. The school 
districts that are currently closed are some of the best funded 
in the Nation. Fairfax County is in the top 10. Schools that 
are closed have saved millions of dollars while open schools 
have lost money.
    America rallied to give them more money anyway. In the 
CARES Act, a year ago today, Congress appropriated $13 billion. 
In December, an additional $54 billion. Despite most of that 
money remaining unspent in 2021, this Congress pursued $126 
billion more in the American Rescue Plan, nearly none of it to 
be spent actually reopening schools.
    The latest goal post moving has come around 6-foot 
distancing. We knew this was overcautious in 2020 because a 
majority of school districts were already ignoring it. But 
districts like Fairfax used it as a crutch to only consider 
opening 2 days a week. The CDC finally admitted what they 
already knew and reduced it to 3 feet. Randi Weingarten, of the 
American Federation of Teachers, said that still was not good 
enough and they wanted even more money.
    No science or vaccination or amount of money will ever be 
good enough. The kids are suffering greatly. We have seen a 
terrible spike in suicides, depression, anxiety, and a loss of 
access to nutrition, socialization, and physical health. 
Children with physical and learning disabilities, who require 
additional support, have received a minimum of what the law 
compels schools to offer.
    So many students are falling behind in Fairfax County that 
they actually eliminated failing grades altogether. These are 
the results of the union efforts.
    Families are fleeing public schools. Inequality is 
skyrocketing. And our most vulnerable populations are getting 
hit the hardest. The data is vast and clear. Schools are safe. 
Public health, pediatric and psychological experts are nearly 
unanimously agreed that school closures are the crisis in their 
own right and need to end.
    It is time for science and common sense to prevail. Let's 
not wait one more day. The fall is just an excuse for districts 
like Fairfax to keep falling behind. We hear that we need more 
money and more time and schools have had plenty of both. If 
public school systems like Fairfax can choose to not offer 
adequate instruction, these billions of dollars should go to 
students instead, so they can access better choices.
    Thank you and I look forward to your questions.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Mr. Cooper.
    Ms. Rachidi.

STATEMENT OF ANGELA RACHIDI, ROWE SCHOLAR, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE 
                           INSTITUTE

    Ms. Rachidi. Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey, and 
members of the Committee, thank you for having me here today.
    My name is Angela Rachidi and I am the Rowe Scholar in 
poverty studies at the American Enterprise Institute where I 
have spent the past several years research policies aimed at 
reducing poverty and increasing employment.
    I want to make three points in my testimony. First, 
statistics on poverty and income show that poverty had already 
fallen by 3 percentage points below prepandemic rates in the 
months leading up to passage of President Biden's American 
Rescue Plan.
    This raises the question of why Congress passed such a 
large rescue package in recent weeks when the data were already 
moving in the right direction.
    This is especially concerning because, to my second point, 
the safety net expansions included in the American Rescue Plan 
undermine the successful antipoverty policies of the past 
quarter century by discouraging work and increasing the 
likelihood of single parenthood.
    The successful policy reforms of the 1990s get too little 
credit for substantially reducing child poverty in this 
country. The child poverty rate, when properly measured, 
declined by half since 1993 because of welfare reform and 
expansions to the Earned Income Tax Credit, both policies that 
strongly encourage employment.
    These declines in poverty were especially large for Black 
and Hispanic children, narrowing the racial gap in child 
poverty rate substantially over the past 25 years. In contrast, 
the American Rescue Plan discourages work and jeopardizes these 
policy successes.
    The American Rescue Plan expanded the Child Tax Credit to 
nonworking families, reversing decades of successful welfare 
policies that condition assistance on employment. Without work, 
families will spend more time in poverty and face fewer options 
to becoming self-reliant and moving up the income ladder.
    Additionally, expanding the Child Tax Credit to nonworking 
families is on top of other program expansions that also 
discourage work, such as SNAP and generous unemployment 
insurance.
    Combining the provisions in the American Rescue Plan 
together means that many low-income families will receive more 
money not working than working. This will lead to skill 
atrophy, meaning a loss of workplace skills when they are out 
of the labor market and will make reentering the labor force 
even harder for them. This formula will slow the economic 
recovery and harm families in the long run.
    When you consider the continued school closures to in-
person learning, I am also concerned about the burden being 
placed on mothers and how all of these policies together make 
it more likely that they will leave the labor force, which will 
negatively affect their financial future and the broader 
economic recovery.
    I can personally attest to the substantial difficulties for 
families and children when schools failed to open for in-person 
learning. In fact, we moved our family out of the United States 
so that my four children could attend school in person after 
months of struggling with virtual learning. It is a tragedy 
that after a full year, so many children in America still do 
not have access to full-time in-person----
    Chairman Brown. She moved her family out of the United 
States for school.
    Ms. Rachidi. Temporarily.
    Finally, proponents of the American Rescue Plan have 
overstated the positive effects of this legislation while 
understating the true costs. Efforts in the coming months will 
attempt to show the positive aspects of this legislation but 
these will be short-term and artificial gains. They will mask 
the long-term negative consequences of this legislation that 
will be difficult to reverse, such as reduced labor force 
participation, more children born to single parents and 
entrenched poverty for more Americans.
    Thank you for the opportunity to testify and I look forward 
to your questions.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Ms. Rachidi.
    Ms. Matsui, nearly 3 million American women have been 
forced out of paid work during the pandemic. The American 
Rescue Plan gives them more support with the expansion of the 
Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit. Why do you 
think expanded EITC and CTC are so critical, particularly to 
women and to families?
    Ms. Matsui. Thank you for your question, Senator. And thank 
you for your leadership in improving these critical tax credits 
for families.
    As you know, women of color have suffered devastating job 
losses and they are overrepresented in essential front-line 
jobs where they face racial and gender wage gaps, as well. And 
they are facing higher rates of household income loss, housing 
insecurity, and food insecurity.
    We are already seeing that Black workers are experiencing a 
lag in recovering jobs, and this is consistent with the 
experience of women of color in previous recessions.
    So refundable tax credits like the EITC and Child Tax 
Credit especially benefit women of color and the income boost 
from these credits will boost the income of families above the 
poverty line and help them pay the bills.
    In addition, the financial support from these credits will 
be important for women of color as the economy recovers 
throughout 2021 and in 2022, in the earlier part of the year 
when they file their tax returns.
    Thank you.
    Chairman Brown. Ms. Parrott, I am struck by a line in your 
testimony that ``The Nation would need fewer stopgap measures 
during hard times if we had stronger permanent policies in 
place to help households and workers when they need it.''
    What are your recommendations for supporting or 
strengthening support for families and workers beyond the 
pandemic?
    Ms. Parrott. Yes, thanks for that.
    You know, we under invest in our kids. We under invest in 
low-paid workers and helping people when they are out of work 
and we continue to have tens of millions of people without 
health coverage. So let me just take these quickly each.
    In terms of children, we tolerate very high levels of 
poverty, particularly among Black and Latino children. And we 
tolerate far higher levels of poverty than in other wealthy 
nations. But the difference there is not the difference in 
poverty because of differences in earnings. Actually, when you 
look at child poverty before we consider Government assistance, 
we actually look a lot like other countries. But other 
countries do a lot more to help struggling families and lift 
kids out of poverty.
    But the good news is we know what works. We know that the 
expanded Child Tax Credit in the rescue plan made permanent 
would reduce child poverty by 40 percent. That is 4 million 
children. We know that housing vouchers stabilize families' 
housing and reduce eviction. We know that nutrition assistance 
works and improves long-term outcomes for children.
    And I want to underscore the long-term outcomes because we 
know that poverty has long-term negative effects on children.
    In terms of workers, parents who work in low-paid jobs 
often cannot afford child care, they often do not have paid 
family medical leave or even paid sick days. And people, when 
they lose their jobs, just do not have access to unemployment 
benefits absent the kind of stopgap measures we put in place.
    And we also do not do enough to help people who have dim 
labor market prospects when we have things that work.
    And finally, we need to build on the success of the 
Affordable Care Act. We can get to universal coverage if we 
have the will to do it.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Ms. Parrott.
    Ms. Matsui, we know how hard this pandemic has hit so many 
renters and millions were already struggling with high housing 
costs prior to the pandemic. The American Rescue Plan gives 
them emergency rental assistance.
    Now, what are your recommendations--and say it in about 60 
seconds if you can--what are your recommendations for solving 
the affordable housing crisis we already had?
    Ms. Matsui. Thank you for your question, Senator.
    As you know, many families before the pandemic were 
struggling to meet affordable housing costs. The amount that 
families need to earn in order to rent an affordable two-
bedroom home is out of reach for millions of women and 
families. Someone working at minimum wage would have to work 13 
hours a day, 7 days a week in order to afford a two-bedroom 
household in most places.
    And so dramatically increasing the amount of housing 
assistance so that all of the families who need it can access 
it will both ensure housing stability and prevent kind of the 
cascade of negative effects that housing instability, eviction, 
and home loss can place on women and families.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you very much, Ms. Matsui.
    Senator Toomey is recognized.

         OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PATRICK J. TOOMEY

    Senator Toomey. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
    The $1.9 trillion bill that our Democratic colleagues 
passed seems designed to make far more people more dependent on 
Government and less self-reliant than they would otherwise be. 
For example, the bill eliminates the requirement to earn 
income, which is to say to work, in order to receive the 
increased and fully refundable Child Tax Credit.
    The bill also famously provides extra unemployment benefits 
such that at some periods of time a majority of people not 
working are getting paid more by the Government to not work 
than they would get paid if they went to work.
    So I want to explore how these huge new incentives not to 
work are harmful to especially low- and middle-income families.
    Dr. Rachidi, as I know you are aware, I think in the 1990s 
we made some reforms on a bipartisan basis to a number of 
welfare programs that included a work requirement or at least a 
requirement that a recipient attempt to find work as a 
condition of getting the benefits.
    So let me ask you this, did those work requirement rules 
reduce poverty or did they increase poverty in the United 
States?
    Ms. Rachidi. Thank you for the question.
    So the work requirements that you are talking about were 
part of welfare reform in the late 1990s. And yes, the evidence 
shows that poverty reduced, among children in particular, 
dramatically after those reforms were put in place. And it was 
due to those reforms, as well as to expanded Earned Income Tax 
Credit, which also rewarded work. So when you combined the work 
requirements and conditioning assistance on employment, along 
with a wage supplement through the Earned Income Tax Credit, 
poverty--as I mentioned in my testimony--for children declined 
by half over the next 25 years.
    Senator Toomey. So the very policies that dramatically 
reduced poverty, especially among children, those policies were 
watered down in this last bill.
    Let me ask you about this, does it stand to reason in your 
mind that if the Government sets up an unemployment insurance 
benefit program that will pay someone more to stay at home than 
they can earn if they go to work, does it stand to reason that 
some people are going to make the decision to stay home?
    Ms. Rachidi. Yes, definitely. And I think that that might 
be appropriate at certain times, certainly in the immediate 
aftermath of the pandemic that was possible. But it will 
definitely slow the economic recovery. And I think at the point 
we are at now, that should be a big concern.
    Senator Toomey. Right. And how about the effect it is going 
to have on those very workers? I mean, if the Government is 
telling someone we will pay you more not to work than to work, 
it is hard to fault the person for saying OK, maximizing income 
for my family is pretty important. But what is the long-term 
effect of people make a rational decision and stay out of the 
workforce for an extended period of time because of these 
Government incentives?
    Ms. Rachidi. Oh, there is a large literature in the 
economics literature that shows the longer people are out of 
the labor the much harder it is to reenter the labor market. 
They lose skills. I mentioned skill atrophy. They lose not only 
hard skills that they cannot keep up, but they also lose soft 
skills.
    So the literature is very clear that the longer people stay 
out, it becomes much harder for them in the long run and hurts 
them in the long run.
    Senator Toomey. And then, Mr. Cooper, you know, the thing 
that is so painful about this school closure situation is how 
polarized it is. Wealthy families can afford to go to private 
schools and private schools are open. They have been open.
    But the public schools--and if you are a low- or middle-
income person you do not have the luxury of sending your kids 
to a private school--they tend to be closed. Who do you think 
is responsible for the fact that public schools are, by and 
large, still not fully open?
    Mr. Cooper. Thank you, Senator.
    And also, thank you for raising this issue because so many 
right now are ignoring it. And I know parents appreciate you 
bringing it to this hearing.
    You know, right behind me behind this wall, on the other 
side, are a group of neighbor kids and a tutor that we all 
collectively hired in order to help them handle the day-to-day 
of online learning. We are fortunate to have the means to do 
that. But even with that being said, it is still a terrible 
environment for learning.
    The inequality gap that is growing is not simply between 
the haves and the have-nots. It is between the same communities 
of people who choose the private option down the street because 
it is the only one open.
    But look at the standardized tests next year. What is going 
to be the difference between the child in Florida, who has been 
in school 5 days a week all year, and the child in Virginia, 
who has had maybe 15 days of in-person instruction? What is the 
equitable solution for those students?
    We have a lot of work to do on this and money is not going 
to solve the problem. It is just a matter of will and for 
unions to, frankly, get out of the way.
    Senator Toomey. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Toomey.
    Senator Menendez is recognized for 5 minutes.
    Senator Menendez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I share Senator Toomey's concerns about children in school. 
But I also recognize there is a big difference between a 
private school that cherry picks its students and has a small, 
limited universe with a lot of spacing and a very small student 
ratio size to its teacher than a public school--such as in my 
State of New Jersey--that often is significantly overcrowded, 
has maybe 30 kids to a teacher, and where physical spacing and 
other issues are a challenge.
    So I do not think there is a one-size-fits-all suggestion 
that the public schools, you know, can easily do that some of 
the private schools are doing without very significant issues 
of ventilation and other things.
    I want to turn to one of the biggest lessons learned from 
the Great Recession, which was the need for the Federal 
Government to do more to proactively help workers and families 
navigate an economic crisis. Recessions last longer, they are 
far deeper, they hurt many people when Congress fails to craft 
solutions that rise to the magnitude of the challenge. I think 
we learned that lesson from the Great Recession.
    I certainly was here and saw the legislative responses to 
it. It fell, in my mind, far short and so therefore it was 
longer and deeper in terms of its hurt.
    The American Rescue Plan has some bold action in it, 
including the question of State and local government 
assistance.
    Ms. Parrott, approximately 1 million jobs at the State and 
local level have been eliminated or furloughed since the 
pandemic began. How does this compare to the 2008 and 2009 
recession? And what does that experience tell us would be the 
impact, not just to these families but to the economy as a 
whole if States and local governments were not able to rehire 
these needed workers?
    Ms. Parrott. Thank you for that.
    It is much worse, actually. In the worst part of the Great 
Recession, State and localities had cut 750,000 jobs. So this 
is a significantly larger number of layoffs.
    You know, those Great Recession era job cuts really did 
slow our economic recovery. States and localities were still 
laying people off when the rest of the economy was starting to 
look forward and that acted as a drag on the rest of the 
economy.
    The rescue plan's resources for States, localities, 
territories and tribes will help bring back teachers, other 
school workers, firefighters, others that have been laid off, 
will allow them resources to meet their COVID-19 costs. In 
places with revenue loss, it will fill that in. And it will 
allow those Governments to be able to help struggling families 
and businesses, all toward getting us on track to a strong 
recovery.
    The other thing I will just say is that there are 
localities and States with economies heavily dependent on 
tourism and travel that are particularly hard hurt. Many tribal 
governments fall into that category, have significant needs. So 
these resources are really going to help fill in important gaps 
and pave the way to a stronger recovery.
    Senator Menendez. Ms. Matsui, our country navigates the 
COVID crisis, a tragic epidemic of gun violence, but we are 
also in the midst of a full-blown student debt crisis with 43 
million owing over $1.5 trillion which I think is not only a 
drag on the person fortunes of those individuals and their 
futures but on the collective economy.
    Have broad swaths of the 43 million who hold student loan 
debt been able to successfully obtain forgiveness through IDR?
    Ms. Matsui. Thank you for your question, Senator.
    Student loan debt is a critical issue for women, especially 
women of color, because they hold a disproportionate share of 
student loan debt and because gender and racial wage gaps means 
that it takes longer for women to repay those debts.
    My understanding is that a very limited number of borrowers 
have been able to have their loans canceled through income-
driven repayment.
    Senator Menendez. Well, according to data obtained by 
consumer groups, there is about 2 million student loan 
borrowers who have been in repayment for more than 20 years. 
Just 32, 32, of 2 million have ever qualified for loan 
cancellation. So IDR is not working. The Public Service Loan 
Forgiveness is not working.
    I think the American Rescue Plan facilitated the 
Administration's path toward broad-based student loan 
forgiveness by including the provision that I authored that no 
longer taxes an individual on any forgiveness, along with 
Senator Warren.
    So I hope that we understand that in the midst of a 
pandemic and still employment and economic challenges that we 
could unlock an enormous potential in this regard for women and 
for all students in our society who are overburdened by debt.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Menendez.
    Is Senator Tillis here? Or not?
    [No response.]
    Chairman Brown. Or Senator Hagerty?
    [No response.]
    Chairman Brown. Senator Tester is recognized for 5 minutes.
    Senator Tester. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Even before the pandemic, Montana had challenges around 
housing. I think it is true across the country. Affordability 
and availability of housing are big issues. Some areas of the 
State dealt with an aging housing stock and how that was going 
to be maintained and improved to livability. The pandemic has 
made these challenges worse.
    I am hearing from small business owners who are struggling 
and that is causing them to fall behind on the mortgage. The 
same is true for plenty of homeowners and renters. The problems 
for renters cause problems for mom and pop landlords. It is a 
domino.
    And if homeowners and renters cannot access the programs 
meant to provide them assistance, then they can be in a lot of 
trouble when forbearance programs and eviction moratoriums 
expire.
    So my question for you, Ms. Parrott, is how impactful could 
the housing programs included in the recent legislation be for 
folks--and I want you to really kind of focus on rural areas 
like Montana?
    Ms. Parrott. Yes, thanks for that question.
    So there is a number of housing provisions in the rescue 
plan, as you well know. Two big ones are additional resources 
for the Emergency Rental Assistance Program and housing 
vouchers. There is also help for homelessness and provisions 
for homeowners.
    The emergency rental assistance actually is building on 
what was done in the December package. So all told that, 
together, is roughly $50 billion. So those dollars are really 
starting to hit localities. Treasury has worked hard in a short 
period of time to start to get those dollars out.
    But the rubber is going to meet the road in implementation, 
whether it is in rural communities or cities. We have been in 
touch with many, many partners around the country and have been 
heartened to hear that those programs are really starting to 
open up this month. That provides an enormous amount of 
assistance, particularly on the rental side, for people who are 
behind in rent.
    You know, getting out from that rental debt is going to 
make a huge difference in them being able to move forward; 
right? Hopefully, they are moving forward. Their incomes are 
going to go up. They will be able to regain jobs. If they are 
not saddled with that debt, it is really going to help them 
move forward.
    The housing vouchers are also critical. They are going to 
help people with much more significant housing challenges, 
people who either already experiencing homelessness or at great 
risk of experiencing homelessness.
    Senator Tester. You spoke about this, but what sort of 
oversight do we need to be focused on to make sure the folks 
that need this assistance actually have access to it?
    Ms. Parrott. So that is a great question.
    We have been in touch with the Administration quite a bit 
around implementation. They are certainly quite focused on the 
fact that these dollars need to get out, but that there also 
needs to be oversight.
    And so, I think Treasury is quite understanding the task 
ahead of them. It is, frankly, a little tough because Treasury 
does not usually run housing assistance programs but those 
dollars were placed there in December. And so they are working 
closely with HUD. I think that relationship is going to be 
really important, making sure Treasury and HUD are working 
close together and making sure we are getting good information 
from States and localities that are implementing the program to 
make sure that those dollars are going out.
    It will take some time. There is just no doubt about that. 
But hopefully, those programs are really going to get ramped up 
this month and we will start to see people's debt load from 
rent really decline.
    Senator Tester. I think that is good counsel. Mr. Chairman, 
and you may have already had conversations with Marcia Fudge, 
but I think we should be encouraging them to really work hand-
in-glove, HUD and Treasury, to make sure that this money does 
go out in the right way.
    Thank you. I will yield back my time.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Tester.
    Senator Warren is recognized for 5 minutes.
    Senator Warren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you for 
holding this hearing.
    The pandemic has been devastating to child care providers 
and to families looking for affordable quality care. In 
Massachusetts, more than 1,000 child care programs have closed 
since the pandemic began. For families, not having child care 
means an impossible balancing act that hits women the hardest. 
More than 2 million women left the workforce in 2020. Women's 
workforce participation is at its lowest level since 1988.
    Starting last April, Senator Tina Smith and I started 
ringing the alarm that the child care sector was on the brink 
of collapse. We called for a $50 million child care bailout. We 
have been pushing for it ever since. And we got it done in the 
American Rescue Plan.
    With the support of so many of our colleagues, Tina and I 
secured more than $53 billion in child care relief money. That 
is the largest Federal investment in child care since World War 
II.
    Ms. Matsui, what will this relief money mean for child care 
providers and for working families?
    Ms. Matsui. Senator, thank you for your question and thank 
you for your leadership in making sure that families, 
providers, and the workforce got the child care relief that 
they needed during the pandemic. And as you very accurately 
noted, the pandemic has wreaked havoc on an already fragmented 
and inequitable system.
    The $39 billion in direct funding for child care in the 
rescue plan includes $24 billion in stabilization funds for 
child care providers as well as $15 billion in the Childcare 
and Development Block Grant or CCDBG. And this will make a 
tremendous difference for child care providers and families 
with providers having often to close, furlough workers, or 
operating on the slimmest or margins and taking out personal 
debt because of the increase in costs for COVID and decreased 
slots, which means that they have lower revenues.
    So the stabilization fund, fortunately, can be used to 
support providers who have closed or who are operating with 
higher COVID-related expenses during the pandemic. It will 
cover a range of expenses from personnel, rent, personal 
protective equipment, COVID-related supplies, reimbursement of 
those costs.
    In addition, a really important piece is mental health 
supports, both for children and for early educators.
    For parents, the CCDBG additional funds will provide 
expanded assistance so that women can go back to work and 
afford and access the child care that they need. And in 
addition, very importantly, this includes child care for 
essential workers.
    So really, this is the help that the child care sector 
needs to make it to the other side of the pandemic.
    Senator Warren. Well, I am so glad that we have finally 
been able to get the relief to our child care providers and to 
the families who need it.
    But you know, our goal cannot just be to stabilize an 
already broken system. This year has shown us how essential 
child care is and how desperately inadequate the system was 
even before the pandemic.
    So let me ask you another question here, Ms. Matsui. What 
more does Congress need to do to actually fix the underlying 
problems in the child care system?
    Ms. Matsui. Thank you for that question, Senator.
    We completely agree that returning to a broken status quo 
is not enough. It is time to build a comprehensive child care 
and early education system that works for our Nation's 
children, families, educators, and the economy as a whole.
    So this entails creating a guarantee of affordable, high 
quality child care for every family who needs it, including by 
investing in the education and compensation of a diverse 
workforce and providing child care, after school, summer care 
options for both young children and for older children.
    In particular, this requires providing equitable access to 
preschool in a model that is inclusive of centers, schools, 
community-based options, Head Start and family child care 
homes, and supports a just and strong birth to 5 system.
    And as you note, many communities have what we call child 
care deserts, which is where child care is not available at 
all, much less the kind of choices that families need and 
deserve. So we need to serve safe, energy efficient, and 
developmentally appropriate care facilities in home-based 
options in all neighborhoods and in all settings.
    Senator Warren [presiding]. Well, I very much appreciate 
that. In our next recovery bill, we need to make sure that our 
child care system never comes close to collapse again.
    I want to underscore what you said. That means guaranteeing 
affordable child care to every single family that needs it. It 
means making sure that child care workers are being paid a 
living wage. And we need to make long-term investments in the 
supply of child care, to make sure that we have high quality 
child care slots available to every child who needs it.
    So I am going to be putting forward specific proposals on 
how to do that. We cannot afford to just nibble around the 
edges of an inadequate system any longer. We need to make big 
changes to fix this problem.
    I look forward to working with my colleagues to get this 
done.
    Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I think the Chairman had to run to another hearing.
    Is Senator Van Hollen here?
    [No response.]
    Senator Warren. Senator Van Hollen? Going once, going 
twice? If not, Senator Tillis?
    [No response.]
    Senator Warren. Senator Sinema?
    [No response.]
    Senator Warren. Senator Hagerty?
    [No response.]
    Senator Warren. Senator Warnock?
    [No response.]
    Senator Warren. Do we have a Senator here who still wishes 
to ask questions?
    [No response.]
    Senator Warren. All right.
    I am not sure, we may have some more people coming. So if 
our witnesses will just hold on for a few minutes, the problem 
we have right now is we are in the middle of voting and people 
are trying to get their votes in and make it back. So I do not 
want to close the hearing down.
    So if our witnesses are amenable, maybe we can stay here 
for just a little bit.
    But actually, while we have a chance to do this, one of the 
things I hope you and I can talk about just a little bit more 
here, since I have a little extra time as it turns out, Ms. 
Matsui, can you talk just a little bit about child care wages 
and why they are so low? And what that means for child car 
workers?
    Ms. Matsui. Thank you so much for the question, Senator 
Warren.
    One of the serious flaws and gaps in the child care system 
is the undercompensation of the workforce. As you know, most 
child care workers earn less than $12 an hour, which is 
absolutely not commensurate with the highly skilled work that 
they do caring for our youngest children.
    I will also add that the workforce is disproportionately 
composed of Black and Brown women and so we are relying on the 
undervalued labor of women of color to provide this care.
    One of the things that is critically important, as you 
note, for revaluing, resetting our child care system is making 
sure that child care workers are adequately compensated and 
that they have opportunities for education, for professional 
development, and that they are paid a living wage so that they 
are not relying on some of the nutrition and food and other 
supports to make ends meet for themselves and their families.
    Senator Warren. Thank you so much, Ms. Matsui. Your points 
are exactly right and it is why, when we talk about child care, 
it is not just about making sure that we put money into the 
system. It is making sure that the people who are working in 
that system are fairly compensated.
    Senator Tillis, are you with us?
    Senator Tillis. I am.
    Senator Warren. In the stead of the Chair, I recognize 
Senator Tillis.
    Senator Tillis. Thank you, Senator Warren.
    Mr. Cooper, school closures have correlated with increased 
child hospitalizations, a 20 percent increase in student 
suicide attempts, 40 percent increase in student disruptive 
behavior disorders. School closures are also keeping parents, 
particularly women, from being able to go back to work because 
of the vital role that schools play in child care during the 
day.
    Last year I did 70 telephone town halls with nearly a half 
million people in North Carolina. And the one thing that became 
clear, it is falling hardest on exceptional children or 
children in exceptional education programs.
    I know that you have three school-aged children. Can you 
give me an idea of how this has personally impacted them?
    Mr. Cooper. Thank you for that, Senator.
    I would say that a lot of this hearing so far has been 
about child care and we have just been missing the Occam's 
razor, which is that women are leaving the workforce because 
schools are closed. We are trying to solve a problem with money 
rather than with common sense. Common sense says if we get the 
schools open because they are safe, which we know they are, 
women will return to the workforce. Right now, they are headed 
home to handle the job that public school administrators are 
unwilling to do.
    Our kids have struggled for the last year. My kindergartner 
saw the inside of a classroom for the first time a couple of 
weeks ago. And that is disorienting, especially when we speak 
to relatives across the country who shake their heads at us and 
say ``Our schools have been open 5 days a week this entire 
time. I do not understand what is going on.''
    So we have to explain ``Well, unions are a little bit more 
powerful here and they have got these demands.'' And it does 
not make sense, and so our kids are falling behind. And no 
amount of money in 2025 is going to fix what is happening to 
our children right now
    Senator Tillis. Mr. Cooper, in North Carolina I have 
surveyed the landscape in the public schools, private schools, 
charter schools. At least in North Carolina, we have seen a 
number of the parochial schools, private schools, and some of 
the charter schools open over this time period. What can you 
tell me about the private schools in the D.C. area?
    Mr. Cooper. Yes, I mean, that is such a good point, 
Senator. Obviously, private schools have wait lists miles long 
right now. People are emptying their bank accounts, frankly, 
and their savings trying to figure out how they can get their 
kids into a Catholic school.
    But you know, Senator Menendez also raised the point of 
private schools and said ``Well, they are different. They are 
smaller, self-selected populations.'' Frankly, let us take 
private schools out of the equation. Just on public schools, 
well over half the districts in this country are open 5 days a 
week. It is not a private versus public. Public schools over 
this country have figured out how to safely open for months 
because they are following the science. They are not waiting 
around for a few extra billion dollars.
    It is just a matter of will at this point. It is not a 
matter that there still remains restrictions holding us back.
    Senator Tillis. I know, again, I track this pretty closely. 
I was Speaker of the House in North Carolina. We worked on 
Opportunity Scholarships for children with disabilities, 
ultimately for children who are below 150 percent of the 
poverty level. Thank goodness that those 5,000 children are 
able to go to school, most of them from the beginning of the 
school year last year. So I do not really understand and--I do 
not know, there may be members here who can bring it to my 
attention--I am not aware of any serious public health risk or 
super spreader events in these public schools.
    The only thing I am aware of is a mother crying on a 
telephone town hall because her child with developmental 
disabilities, she does not have the skills to take care of this 
child. And this child has lost nearly an academic year of 
enrichment and the therapeutic value that comes from having a 
trained professional to have access to them in public schools.
    You know, it seems to me that there has to be something 
more than the concern if a public health threat that is keeping 
these schools closed. And we have children--the ones I am most 
worried about are the same ones that we have Opportunity 
Scholarships to in North Carolina, are the children who are 
most likely to lose an academic year if we continue to have 
teachers unions and others keep them away from the most 
enriching experience they can have as young children.
    So Mr. Cooper, I am sorry that you are going through this, 
but you are not alone. There are hundreds of thousands of 
students across the country. There are tens or hundreds of 
thousands of students across the State of North Carolina--
although we are opening--that are suffering from this position.
    Thank you for being here today.
    Thank you, Senator Warren.
    Mr. Cooper. I think our school is having a fire drill back 
there, so sorry about the alarm.
    Chairman Brown [presiding]. Thank you, Senator Tillis.
    Senator Warner from Virginia is recognized.
    Senator Warner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you for 
holding this hearing.
    One of the areas that I want to raise, and I know Mr. 
Cooper has got some challenges around the Fairfax County 
Schools process, but one thing Fairfax County has done a pretty 
good job on is making sure we have got broadband. 
Unfortunately, that is not the case for too many Virginians and 
too many Americans.
    I think, as somebody who had a background in this field for 
years--my businesses were in telecom. I think if there is one 
thing we learned out of 2020 and the crisis, it has been that 
high-speed internet connectivity is an economic necessity, not 
a ``nice to have'', whether you want to work at home, study at 
home, telehealth. And frankly, having hot spots alone, where 
you have to transport your kid to the school parking lot to 
study, or for you to work, does not get it.
    The American Rescue Plan made the largest single investment 
in broadband in our country's history, $7 billion going into 
some of the traditional programs like the Lifeline program and 
the E-Rate program, $10 billion that we were able to secure 
with more flexibility to actually encourage expansion of 
coverage. It is terribly important. Too often, the existing 
programs, they help on affordability but they do not end up 
doing enough, in my mind, on expansion of coverage.
    Ms. Parrott, you have mentioned the critical importance of 
the long overdue nature of broadband investments. Again, within 
the Capital Projects Fund we secured $10 billion. I would love 
to have you make a comment on how we can make sure the Treasury 
Department ensures that these dollars are well spent and that 
they end up resulting in the kind of expansion of coverage that 
I think we all know needs to be done.
    Ms. Parrott. Thank you for that.
    And of course, the other place that broadband investment 
can happen is out of those State--flexible State fiscal aid 
funds that are going to States, localities, territories, and 
tribes. So that is another avenue for those kinds of 
investments.
    So look, I think implementation across all of the kinds of 
areas that are touched by the American Rescue Plan is just of 
critical importance. Whether it is housing vouchers, whether it 
is broadband, whether it is the refundable tax credits, 
sometimes the locus of that implementation is at the Federal 
Government Level and sometimes it is primarily at the State and 
local level.
    And this question of oversight is going to be really 
important. I am not a broadband expert but I know a lot about 
Government oversight, having served at the Office of Management 
and Budget. And so, I think across the board, I am really 
heartened to see the Biden administration place a high priority 
on implementation and ensuring, really tracking when dollars 
are going out, how they are going out, and building in the 
opportunity to course correct when issues arise, as they surely 
will.
    Senator Warner. Thank you and I just want to say on this 
subject.
    Paul de Sa, who is the SEC's top economist, has indicated 
that to finish this, to get the 97 or 98 percent coverage we 
need at the speeds we need--frankly, the current speed levels 
of 25 mg down, 3 mg up, is not high enough.
    It could take maybe another $75 or $80 billion and I am 
proud to support some of the efforts that Mr. Clyburn in the 
House and others in the Senate are making.
    Ms. Matsui, I would like you to take the last part of my 
time, though, and speak again on this question of how broadband 
has become an absolute economic necessity going forward. We 
have seen, obviously, the challenges of COVID fall 
disproportionately on women, women with families. The 
exacerbation of kids learning at home and not having access to 
broadband makes these challenges even greater. As parents, and 
women in particular, juggle the enormous demands how do we make 
sure that--what kind of role will broadband play in evening the 
playing field?
    Ms. Matsui. Thank you for your question, Senator.
    And I completely agree that for those families where women 
are able to work at home, certainly equitable broadband access 
enables that. We are definitely seeing, as you noted, the 
disparities for low-income communities, for communities of 
color being able to access broadband to be able to do remote 
schooling adequately. And so, ensuring equitable broadband 
access is certainly key to making sure that gaps and inequities 
do not persist through the rest of the pandemic and the 
accommodations that we have to make for the global health 
crisis.
    Thank you.
    Senator Warner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Warner.
    The next three, and I have to duck out for another hearing 
but I will be back. The next three are Senator Hagerty, and 
then will turn it over to Senator Van Hollen, if you would. And 
then Senator Van Hollen will turn it over to Senator Warnock, 
if the three of you would cooperate to that. Thank you very 
much.
    Senator Hagerty.
    Senator Hagerty. Thank you, Chairman Brown.
    I will kick it over to Senator Van Hollen.
    And I will be brief, but I must say this: I am quite 
shocked at the conduct of this hearing today. We are not 
talking about getting shots in arms. We are not talking about 
the pandemic. This is a sales pitch for a $1.9 trillion wholly 
partisan package that has very little to do with dealing with 
the pandemic and very little to do with getting our economy 
going again.
    In fact, it puts in place all sorts of bad incentives. We 
even talked about this during the course of the debate. It 
sends stimulus checks to illegal immigrants. What sort of 
incentive is that creating when we have got a crisis at our 
border? We send stimulus checks to inmates. What possible 
impact could that have on our economy, to send a stimulus check 
to an inmate who is being cared for completely by the taxpayer 
and will not be in a position to do anything with that in terms 
of generating economic activity in our society.
    This package is being sold to the American public for 
something that it is not. This is not about the pandemic. That 
is why we are not even talking about it in this hearing today.
    We should be conducting oversight on the $4 trillion that 
actually was passed on a bipartisan basis. There is $1 trillion 
left there yet to be spent.
    We need to be getting kids back into school, as Mr. Cooper 
said. We need to be getting shots in arms, is what this hearing 
was falsely billed as. We need to be focused on the pandemic 
and recovering our economy. We are on the path to recovery now.
    And what we have got right now is a $1.9 trillion freefall 
spending spree that has loads of partisan wish list activity in 
it, lots of socialist programs in it, and bailouts for 
mismanaged States.
    We should be talking about the pandemic. We should be doing 
oversight to get our economy doing, not spending our time 
selling a package that was passed on the thinnest or margins in 
the Senate.
    Thank you.
    I yield back to Senator Van Hollen now.
    Senator Van Hollen [presiding]. Thank you, Senator Hagerty 
and let me thank all of our witnesses.
    Just briefly, to respond, we are focused on all the efforts 
the Congress has taken, including the American Rescue Plan, 
which includes additional resources both to increase the supply 
of vaccine and also, importantly, to distribute it more quickly 
and also to deal with the economic fallout.
    I will just remind everybody that President Trump was a 
huge advocate of the individual payments that were included in 
this bill and the Child Tax Credit is something that we think 
is desperately needed to help lift kids out of poverty. In 
fact, I hope, we will extend that.
    The rental assistance is also a critical package to prevent 
eviction and also to make sure that people can make those 
rental payments. And of course, not every landlord is a big 
corporation. We want to make sure that landlords are able to 
pay their bills, as well.
    But I want to ask Ms. Parrott, I want to thank you for your 
testimony, as well as the report that the CBPP issued just 
yesterday with respect to affordable housing going forward. 
Right now, we have been working to keep people in their homes 
and able to pay rent.
    Senator Todd Young and I have a proposal to expand the home 
voucher programs focusing on families with kids and helping 
them move to areas of greater opportunity. In fact, this is a 
bipartisan bill that proposes 500,000 additional vouchers. The 
research has been very clear on how this can really help 
families expand economic opportunities.
    Can you talk a little bit about that in the context of 
moving forward and what we want to consider as we talk about 
the better part of Build Back Better?
    Ms. Parrott. Sure. Housing instability is extremely 
damaging to families and extremely damaging to children. So 
when parents are worried about their ability to maintain their 
homes, it raises the level of stress that parents are facing 
and that children are facing, sometimes to levels that are 
literally toxic for children's developing bodies.
    When housing is unstable, families move a lot and they 
often are in overcrowded doubled-up situations and sometimes 
experience homelessness. All of those outcomes mean multiple 
moves and often multiple school changes for children which sets 
back their learning. Housing instability is also linked to 
higher rates of foster care placements and long-term negative 
effects on children.
    But the really good news is that we know that housing 
vouchers work. Housing vouchers have a marked effect, causative 
effect, on housing stability. It reduces frequent moves. It 
reduces overcrowding. And it reduces the share of families that 
experience homelessness.
    And so housing instability is real but the opportunity to 
make real programs is right in front of us if we are willing to 
put the resources into housing vouchers that have such a strong 
track record.
    Senator Van Hollen. Right, and there has been a lot of 
discussion about dealing with the supply side on affordable 
housing. And I agree that that is a very important element and 
a necessary element, increasing the supply. But would you agree 
that, in addition to increasing the supply, we also need to 
move forward on this issue of housing vouchers?
    Ms. Parrott. That is exactly right. So even--first of all, 
some communities do not have a particularly large supply 
problem. Other communities do. But even in communities with 
adequate supply, there is an affordability problem, and that is 
where housing vouchers come in.
    But even when there is a supply problem, if we invest in 
affordable housing, that housing by itself is still likely to 
be out of reach for many low-income families, particularly 
those with the lowest incomes. And so, marrying a supply 
strategy with vouchers can really both expand supply and make 
sure that then families can access that housing and afford it.
    Senator Van Hollen Thank you.
    Ms. Matsui, I mentioned earlier the CTC and the EITC 
provisions and I want to thank the Chairman of this Committee, 
Senator Brown, and others in our caucus for their efforts on 
that, Senator Warnock. It is something that I have been pleased 
to co-sponsor for years.
    Can you talk about the importance of making that permanent 
as we go forward?
    Ms. Matsui. Absolutely and thank you so much both for the 
question and for your leadership, Senator.
    So, we know that even in positive economic times, when we 
are not in the middle of a recession, women and women of color 
especially make up a disproportionate share of the low-income 
workforce and the low-wage workforce. These are jobs that offer 
not only low wages and, for many women, they present 
significant gender and racial wage gaps as well. But 
frequently, these jobs are unstable. They do not offer the 
number of hours that people want and, therefore, it is very 
difficult for many families, even for women who are working 
full-time at a minimum wage job to support their families on 
their paychecks alone.
    The Earned Income Tax Credit and the CTC therefore 
represent an income boost that has significant positive effects 
for women and for their families. It increases their ability to 
work. It increases and improves long-term educational outcomes 
for children. And it boosts families' health.
    So the income increases that are represented by these tax 
credits, even in regular or normal economic times, do improve 
the well-being and economic stability of families. And those 
are reasons that making these tax credit improvements permanent 
is a good strategy, and equitable strategy, and an effective 
strategy for improving the economic security and stability of 
families going forward.
    Senator Van Hollen Thank you. It is going to lift 52,000 
Maryland children out of poverty and, of course, cut childhood 
poverty in half in the United States.
    Now let me turn it over to somebody who has been a very 
strong voice for this. Senator Warnock, I am going to turn it 
over to you, and if you can finish out the hearing.
    Senator Warnock [presiding]. Thank you so much, Senator Van 
Hollen and I want to just continue along the lines of what you 
introduced. I am very excited about the expanded Earned Income 
Tax Credit, the expanded Child Tax Credit. This will help a 
million families with children in Georgia alone and will lift 
171,000 Georgia children out of poverty.
    Can you explain, Ms. Matsui or Ms. Parrott, for those who 
are saying this is some liberal wish-list, the ways in which 
the COVID-19 pandemic has both illuminated and exacerbated the 
disparities that we see and how this expanded Child Tax Credit 
and Earned Income Tax Credit both helps these families and 
helps the economy as an appropriate response to the COVID-19 
pandemic?
    Ms. Parrott. So thank you for the question.
    These expansions are incredibly important. And it is 
important to talk about both the Earned Income Tax Credit and 
the Child Tax Credit. The Earned Income Tax Credit expansion is 
for workers in low-pay jobs that do not have minor children at 
home. Prior to the expansion, these workers were eligible for a 
tiny Earned Income Tax Credit. It was so small that we were 
taxing 5.8 million workers into poverty or deeper into poverty 
because the Earned Income Tax Credit that was available to them 
was so low.
    The EITC expansion will help 17 million workers overall, 
2.8 million Black workers, 2.8 million Latino workers, and 
almost 700,000 Asian-American workers. And that group of people 
that we were taxing into poverty is similarly 
disproportionately workers of color.
    The Child Tax Credit expansion does several things. It 
increases the Child Tax Credit available to most children. And 
for the first time, it makes the full credit available to 27 
million children who, prior to the expansion, got only a 
partial credit or no credit at all because their families' 
incomes were too low. We were providing less help to the 
families that needed it most.
    Of those 27 million children, 9.9 million are Latino, 5.7 
million are Black, and more than 800,000 are Asian Americans. 
Fully half of all Black and all Latino children did not get the 
full Child Tax Credit because their families' incomes were too 
low prior to the expansion. The expansion is estimated to lift 
4.1 million children out of poverty, disproportionately 
children of color.
    The expansion also reduces deep poverty, which is the 
circumstance of children living far below the poverty line.
    Now some have said that this Child Tax Credit expansion is 
going to discourage work, and so I would like to take just a 
moment to tell you what the experts at the National Academies 
of Sciences said about that. They assessed a very similar 
proposal that was a child allowance, so very similar, that 
would similarly be available to all poor and low-income 
children, as well as middle-income children. They assessed that 
the proposal, that 99 percent of the low- and moderate-income 
working adults that would see an increase because of the child 
allowance proposal would remain employed. So there was not 
going to be, by their expert views, droves of people leaving 
the workforce. That makes sense because $250 or $300 per month 
per child is not enough to raise a family.
    They also found that the vast majority of parents would not 
reduce their hours of work. And among the small group that they 
projected may reduce their hours of work, it was an estimated 1 
hour per week. And in many cases, those are people who are 
actually working long hours, often in shift work, where 
reducing their hours somewhat could have very positive impacts 
on themselves and their children.
    So I think it is really important to focus on the 
importance and what it does to reduce child poverty, how that 
changes the opportunity and trajectories of children and not 
overstate or overblow possible negative impacts that experts 
have really studied quite extensively and found to be highly 
unlikely.
    Thank you.
    Senator Warnock. So it seems that this support actually is 
part of the infrastructure that enables people to work, and 
that by doing this we provide support for these families but 
also for the economy. It seems like one more example of what I 
often say, and that is that quite often the right thing to do 
is also the smart thing to do. It is good for these families, 
good for the economy.
    Thank you so much.
    Chairman Brown [presiding]. Thank you, Senator Warnock.
    Thank you all for your cooperation today.
    Senator Toomey, I am not sure if he is still with us. This 
has been very disjointed, and I apologize, and all four of you 
have been really good witnesses, being so cooperative.
    If Senator Toomey wants to make a couple of closing remarks 
before we wrap up?
    [No response.]
    Chairman Brown. Thank you then.
    I hear lots of discussions today. Senator McConnell and 
Senate Republicans do not decide what is a partisan issue, the 
American public does. And the--I mean, we have heard some 
critics grasping at straws trying to find something to 
criticize on this very popular--popular among Democrats, 
Independents, and Republicans in our country--very popular 
rescue plan that Americans have been demanding for more than a 
year.
    Their argument amounts essentially to we should not do 
anything more than the bare minimum. And here you are, trying 
to make life better for people than it was a year ago. And we 
are, and that is the point, and that is what so many of us are 
very, very proud of.
    I would say March 6th, that Saturday after we had been up 
all night voting, was the best day of my political career. I am 
so proud of how we all came together in this country and passed 
the American Rescue Plan.
    Thank you again to the witnesses, all four of you, for 
being here today and providing testimony.
    For Senators who wish to submit questions for the record, 
those questions are due 1 week from today, Thursday, April 1st. 
The witnesses will have 45 days to respond to any of those 
questions. So please do that, to the four of you.
    Thank you again.
    With that, the hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 11:09 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
    [Prepared statements supplied for the record follow:]
              PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN SHERROD BROWN
    Yesterday in this Committee, we heard from Treasury Secretary 
Yellen and Federal Reserve Chair Powell as they gave their quarterly 
CARES Act report to Congress.
    There was a clear message from their testimony: The American Rescue 
Plan is the type of fiscal stimulus we need. We grow the economy when 
we invest in the people who make it work.
    That's what we tried to do with the CARES Act, and it's what we did 
in the American Rescue Plan.
    We know what we need: shots in arms, money in families' pockets, 
children in schools, workers in jobs, and a roof over families' heads.
    That's what President Biden promised, and we are delivering 
immediate results--results that are already transforming people's lives 
for the better.
    We've gotten more than 100 million shots in people's arms, ahead of 
schedule.
    More than 100 million checks have been deposited in Americans' bank 
accounts.
    More schools are bringing students back into the classroom every 
day.
    Yesterday, we talked about how the Rescue Plan will jumpstart our 
recovery. Today, we look at how that lays the groundwork for a better 
future.
    We've heard some critics grasping at straws, trying to find 
something to criticize in this popular Rescue Plan that Americans have 
been demanding for a year.
    Their argument amounts to, ``we shouldn't do anything more than the 
bare minimum, and here you are trying to make life better for people 
than it was a year ago.''
    Yes, we are--that's the point.
    We must aim higher than just returning to the status quo.
    If you talk to the workers and families that I do in Ohio, you 
would know that the status quo wasn't working for a whole lot of 
people.
    It wasn't working for the parents in Cleveland, who are still 
renting a house with lead in the paint, because their finances never 
recovered from their 2009 foreclosure.
    It wasn't working for the student in the foothills of Appalachia in 
Jackson County, who had to go to her grandmother's house to do her 
homework, because it was on a hill and was the only place she could get 
an internet connection.
    It wasn't working for the auto worker in Lordstown, who lost his 
job when GM abandoned that community and decided to make its latest 
vehicle in Mexico instead of Ohio.
    It wasn't working for the mother in Dayton, who works two nonunion 
jobs that together don't even cover the bills, and whose childcare 
costs have gotten so high she's considering a third.
    There's a common thread in all of these Ohioans' stories: their 
hard work doesn't pay off.
    For some of them, their hard work doesn't pay off like it used to--
like they thought it would, and like it did for their parents.
    For others, their hard work, and the work of their parents and 
grandparents, has never really paid off like it should.
    And that growing inequality has only made the pandemic's economic 
pain worse.
    While corporate profits and CEO pay have soared for decades now, 40 
percent of Americans reported they wouldn't be able to come up with 
$400 in an emergency--if their car breaks down, or they have to take 
their child to the emergency room, or their hours get cut back.
    And that was before the pandemic. Last March, millions of people 
faced emergencies, all at once. And we saw the damage that did to the 
economy.
    The top-down strategy we've tried over and over since the 1980s 
doesn't work. It's time to try something different.
    We get to decide what kind of recovery we have, and whether the 
economy we rebuild reflects our values.
    We get to decide whether Wall Street continues calling the shots, 
or whether we begin to remake our economy in a way that grows the 
middle class.
    The American Rescue Plan is a good start.
    Instead of funneling money to Wall Street and the largest 
corporations, and crossing our fingers and hoping they'll pass some of 
that money on to everyone else, we're getting help to people and 
communities.
    In addition to the vaccines, we passed support for housing, so that 
families have a roof over their heads, and can keep the lights on, and 
not fall behind on their rent or mortgage.
    We're supporting our transit systems, so that workers can get to 
work and get to vaccination sites.
    And we are giving the vast majority of families more economic 
security, by giving them checks and expanding the Earned Income Tax 
Credit and the Child Tax Credit. Ninety-two percent of Ohio kids are 
going to see more money in their families' pockets because of the 
Rescue Plan.
    We need to build on these investments. Often the greatest progress 
comes out of the darkest times.
    Think back to the 1930s. FDR and his cabinet saw the rise of 
fascism and the scale of the Depression's damage--and the staggering 
inequality of the Gilded Age economy that had only made these crises 
worse.
    They didn't just settle for muddling through, they didn't try to 
take us back to 1928--they built a better system that led to rising 
prosperity for a broader share of the country, and the strongest middle 
class the world has ever seen.
    We can do the same thing again. We can rebuild that New Deal to 
reflect the way people live and work today, and we can expand it to all 
the women and people of color who were left out a century ago.
    When we do, we strengthen our democracy and we unleash our 
economy's full potential.
    I hope my colleagues will join me in building back better than we 
were before.
                                 ______
                                 
            PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR PATRICK J. TOOMEY
    Chairman Brown, thank you.
    There are a lot of reasons for optimism about the physical and 
economic health of our country. On the physical health front, we've put 
more than 127 million vaccine doses in arms. Around half the U.S. 
population has either had the virus or been vaccinated. The daily COVID 
case count is falling.
    On the economic health front, the economy is in full recovery. The 
unemployment rate has dropped from almost 15 percent in April 2020 to 
6.2 percent this February. Eighteen States have unemployment rates 
below 5 percent. GDP has grown the last two quarters, and economic 
growth is expected to be strong this year.
    All of these positive developments were enabled by the resilience 
of the American people, the ingenuity of the private sector, which 
produced vaccines in record time, and the spirit of cooperation in 
Congress that provided almost $4 trillion in relief through five 
overwhelmingly bipartisan bills.
    Unfortunately, the $1.9 trillion Democrat spending bill is not a 
reason for optimism. It was rammed through Congress on a partisan 
basis, even though a bipartisan deal was possible. It has almost 
nothing to do with an economic recovery. It has almost nothing to do 
with COVID.
    How do we know for sure this bill has nothing to do with an 
economic recovery? The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says 
only fraction of the money in the Democrat spending bill can even be 
spent in 2021. For example, CBO estimates just 5 percent of the $126 
billion for K-12 education can be spent in 2021.
    This bill has almost nothing to do with COVID. So what's in it?
    $414 billion for so-called stimulus checks that won't achieve their 
purported goals. They don't stimulate the economy, as, according to one 
study, three-quarters of the checks will go to savings. They're 
terribly untargeted, as millions of Americans that never lost income 
will receive checks, including some with six figure incomes. To make 
matters worse, stimulus checks are going to convicted murderers, 
rapists, and child sex abusers currently in prison. Amazingly, 
Democrats blocked the Senate from passing legislation to redirect 
stimulus checks from such criminals to crime victims.
    There's also $350 billion to bail out fiscally mismanaged States 
and local governments. On the whole, State and local tax collections 
set a new record in 2020. Despite that, in 2020 the Federal Government 
sent more than $500 billion to States and local governments for COVID 
relief. And on top of that, Democrats insisted on sending them another 
$350 billion in this bill. This new spending is truly amazing as it's 
not needed. In Pennsylvania, a prominent news item across the State has 
been the story of local governments that are trying to figure out how 
to spend the unexpected and unnecessary windfall of cash they're 
receiving.
    Some provisions in the Democrat spending bill are so unrelated to 
COVID, it's hard to read them with a straight face. For example, $86 
billion to bail out multi-employer pensions without requiring any 
reform, $270 million for the National Endowments for the Arts and 
Humanities, and $4 billion for ``reparations''-as the Chairwoman of the 
Senate Agriculture Committee called a loan forgiveness program for 
farmers and ranchers that's based purely on race and ethnicity.
    Today, we'll hear from two witnesses how the Democrat spending bill 
contains provisions that are harmful to American families. Rory Cooper 
is a father of three public school students who's known as ``Mr. Open 
the Schools.'' As Mr. Cooper notes, the Democrat stimulus throws $126 
billion dollars at K-12 schools without requiring them to reopen. Many 
schools remain closed or partially closed due to powerful special 
interests-the teachers' unions. This is despite the fact that CDC 
research shows it's safe to re-open schools. School closures are 
harming students, especially low-income students, and harming parents, 
particularly women, by preventing them from staying in the workforce.
    We'll also hear from Angela Rachidi, a scholar at AEI. She'll 
describe how the Democrat spending bill abandons Clinton era welfare 
reforms that have been so successful in reducing poverty. The Democrat 
spending bill increases welfare benefits in many ways. One example is 
through the Child Tax Credit, which the bill makes fully refundable and 
available to parents that do not earn income. This undermines a proven 
driver of poverty reduction, which is tying welfare benefits to work 
requirements. The Democrat spending bill also has a plus-up in 
unemployment benefits that will result in about half of all recipients 
being paid more not to work than they get paid to work. This creates a 
disincentive to work that will slow the economic recovery.
    In my view, the Democrat stimulus is a cause for concern, not for 
celebration. While I remain optimistic about the direction of our 
country, I'm deeply disappointed that President Biden abandoned the 
path of unity that he pledged at his inauguration and instead chose to 
ram through a wasteful, partisan spending bill that's largely unrelated 
to COVID and that slows our economic recovery, undermines successful 
poverty reduction reforms, and fails to get kids back in classrooms.
                                 ______
                                 
                  PREPARED STATEMENT OF SHARON PARROTT
           President, Center for Budget and Policy Priorities
                             March 25, 2021
    Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey, Members of the Committee, 
thank you for the opportunity to testify before you this morning at 
this important hearing. I am Sharon Parrott, President of the Center on 
Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research and policy 
institute in Washington, D.C.
    In the following pages, I will make four main points:

    First, the economy still has a large net loss of jobs, 
        millions are out of work, and millions are struggling to put 
        food on the table and have fallen behind on their rent because 
        of the pandemic and its economic fallout. The crisis has taken 
        a disproportionate toll on low-income workers, their families, 
        and people of color, shining a light on and exacerbating the 
        nation's long-standing racial and economic inequities.

    Second, the American Rescue Plan Act, which builds on the 
        CARES Act and Families First Act of last spring and the 
        December relief package, is providing much needed help for tens 
        of millions of people facing difficulties paying their bills, 
        while also providing important aid to States, localities, 
        territories, and tribes that they can use to fill revenue 
        holes, address COVID-related needs, and address ``unfinished 
        learning'' that students need to master.

    Third, the nation would have needed fewer stopgap measures 
        during this crisis if we had permanent policies in place that 
        provided sufficient supports for households that struggle to 
        afford the basics, that offered adequate jobless benefits 
        particularly to workers in low-paid jobs who often receive no 
        jobless benefits at all, and that ensured that everyone had 
        health coverage.

    And fourth, the President and Congress will soon have a 
        historic opportunity, through forthcoming recovery legislation, 
        to invest in an equitable recovery that enables everyone to 
        share in its benefits. The nation can afford to make these 
        investments and should start down the road of building a more 
        adequate and fair tax system.
Millions Still Facing Hardship
    Over the last year, the global pandemic and resulting economic 
fallout have taken an enormous toll on the economy and households, 
imposing steep job losses and great hardship that have fallen 
disproportionately on people in low-wage jobs and households with 
children, with particularly steep costs imposed on Black, Latino, 
immigrant, and Indigenous people.
Lost Jobs and Lost Pay
    In February 2021 there were still 9.5 million fewer payroll jobs 
than in February 2020. (See Figure 1.) Black and Latino unemployment 
stood at 9.9 percent and 8.5 percent, respectively, well above the 
white unemployment rate of 5.6 percent--which itself is too high. 
Unemployment is also higher among workers who were born outside the 
United States, which includes individuals who are now U.S. citizens.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    Most of the jobs lost during COVID-19 and the economic crisis have 
come in industries that pay low average wages, with the lowest-paying 
industries accounting for 30 percent of all jobs but 55 percent of the 
jobs lost from February 2020 to February 2021 (the latest month of 
Labor Department employment data). Jobs in low-paying industries were 
down more than twice as much between February 2020 and February 2021 
(11.2 percent) as in medium-wage industries (5.1 percent) and more than 
three times as much as in high-wage industries (3.0 percent). (See 
Figure 2.)
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    Due to a long history of racism and discrimination and starkly 
unequal opportunities in education, housing, health care, and 
employment, Black and Latino workers are disproportionately represented 
in low-paying industries, a key reason why Black and Latino 
unemployment is so much higher than white unemployment. Workers in low-
paid industries that kept their jobs were also more likely than others 
to work on-site rather than remotely, raising their risk of COVID-19.
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    The impact of joblessness goes well beyond the workers themselves 
who are out of work. Some 27 million people (including 6.6 million 
children) either were officially ``unemployed'' (meaning they actively 
looked for work in the last four weeks or were temporarily laid off) or 
lived with an unemployed family member in February, according to the 
basic monthly Current Population Survey that the Census Bureau released 
on March 10. But the official definition of ``unemployed'' understates 
the weakness in the labor market and the degree of hardship joblessness 
is causing. (See Figure 3.) The official definition of unemployed 
leaves out many workers who either lacked work or pay--including 4.2 
million jobless workers in February who did not look for work due to 
COVID-19, according to the Labor Department. This includes workers who 
are unable to work due to their own health or the health of a family 
member and substantial numbers of parents, particularly mothers, who 
are not working because schools and child care are not fully open for 
in-person school and services. Also omitted are over 700,000 workers 
who reported that they had a job but that they were absent from work 
and lost pay in the last four weeks ``because their employer closed or 
lost business due to the coronavirus pandemic,'' according to our 
calculations.
    All told, we estimate, as many as 38 million people in February, 
including nearly 10 million children, lived in a family in which at 
least one adult did not have paid work in the last week due to 
unemployment or the pandemic.
High Levels of Hardship
    While the Rescue Plan will begin to reduce hardship as stimulus 
payments, rental assistance, the Child Tax Credit, and other forms of 
aid begin to reach households, as of February 2021, Census data show 
tens of millions of households struggle to pay their bills, with 
hardship rates particularly high among households of color and 
households with children.
    Since late August, the Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey has 
provided data on the number of adults struggling to cover usual 
household expenses such as food, rent or mortgage, car payments, 
medical expenses, or student loans--and it paints a distressing picture 
of ongoing hardship.
    Nearly 81 million adults (35 percent of all adults in America) 
reported between February 17 and March 1 that their household found it 
somewhat or very difficult to cover usual expenses in the past seven 
days, and that figure rises to 41 percent for adults living with 
children. Black and Latino adults reported higher rates of difficulty 
covering expenses: 53 percent and 49 percent, respectively, compared to 
30 percent for Asian adults and 27 percent for white adults. Grouped 
together, 47 percent of American Indian, Alaska Native, Native 
Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and multiracial adults reported difficulty 
paying for usual expenses (these groups are reported on together 
because the sample size for each group individually is too small).
    An estimated 42 percent of children live in households that have 
trouble covering usual expenses, according to our analysis of the Pulse 
survey data collected from February 3 to 15. They include 61 percent of 
children in Black households, 52 percent of children in Latino 
households, 34 percent of children in Asian households, and 33 percent 
of children in white households.
    More specifically:
    Rent or mortgage. An estimated 13.5 million adults living in rental 
housing--nearly 1 in 5 adult renters--were not caught up on rent, 
according to data collected from February 17 to March 1. Renters of 
color were likelier to report that their household was not caught up on 
rent: 33 percent of Black renters, 20 percent of Latino renters, and 16 
percent of Asian renters reported not being caught up on rent, compared 
to 13 percent of white renters. The rate was 22 percent for American 
Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and 
multiracial adults, who are grouped together due to data limitations.
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    In addition, 28 percent of renters who are parents or otherwise 
live with children reported that they were not caught up on rent, 
compared to 12 percent of adult renters who are not living with anyone 
under age 18. (See Figure 4.) Children in renter households also face 
high rates of food hardship: over 1 in 4 children in rental housing 
live in a household that didn't have enough to eat, according to data 
for the period February 3 to 15 (the latest available data to make 
these estimates). And 4 in 10 children in rental housing live in a 
household that isn't getting enough to eat or isn't caught up on rent.
    While households that make mortgage payments typically have higher 
incomes than renters, they, too, face difficulties, especially if they 
have lost their jobs or seen their incomes fall significantly. An 
estimated 10.3 million adults are in a household that is not caught up 
in its mortgage payment.
    Food. Some 22 million adults (11 percent of all adults) reported 
that their household sometimes or often didn't have enough to eat in 
the last seven days, according to Pulse data collected from February 17 
to March 1--which was far above the prepandemic rate: an Agriculture 
Department survey found that 3.4 percent of adults reported that their 
household had ``not enough to eat'' at some point over the full 12 
months of 2019.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    Adults in households with children were likelier to report that the 
household didn't get enough to eat: 14 percent, compared to 8 percent 
for households without children. And 10 to 15 percent of adults with 
children reported that their children sometimes or often didn't eat 
enough in the last 7 days because they couldn't afford it, well above 
the prepandemic figure. In addition, our analysis of more detailed data 
from the Pulse Survey from February 3 to 15 shows that 6 to 10 million 
children live in a household where children didn't eat enough in the 
last seven days because the household couldn't afford it.
    Black and Latino adults were more than twice as likely as white 
adults to report that their household did not get enough to eat: 22 
percent and 16 percent, respectively, compared to 7 percent of white 
adults. (See Figure 5.) Grouped together, American Indian, Alaska 
Native, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, or multiracial adults were 
more than twice as likely (at 19 percent) as white adults to report 
that their household did not get enough to eat.
The American Rescue Plan Act
    The American Rescue Plan Act will provide needed help to tens of 
millions of people, reduce hardship, help school districts address 
students' ``unfinished learning'' (the learning they have missed over 
the last year because of disruptions to education, remote learning, and 
other pandemic-related issues), and bolster the economy. Along with the 
provisions described below, it includes a new round of economic impact 
(stimulus) payments, public health investments, more child care 
funding, and aid to businesses.
Helping Jobless Workers
    The Rescue Plan will extend critical unemployment benefits that are 
helping jobless workers pay their bills and care for their families.
    The December relief package reinstated a Federal unemployment 
benefit increase, provided more weeks of benefits so that jobless 
workers wouldn't lose them while the nation struggled with the current 
health and economic crisis, and continued the Pandemic Unemployment 
Assistance (PUA) program, which expands benefit eligibility to more 
jobless workers. These provisions were slated to expire in mid-March, 
and the Rescue Plan extends them through September 6. The early 
September cutoff is problematic, however. Joblessness--appropriately 
measured to take into account those who are out of work due to the 
crisis but not captured by the official unemployment rate--particularly 
among workers of color and workers without a college degree, will 
likely remain elevated in the fall. Congress must be prepared to act to 
extend this unemployment benefit before September 6 if joblessness--
overall or among particular groups of workers for whom the recovery is 
lagging--remains high. It is important to note that even if the labor 
market overall has rebounded considerably, extended jobless benefits 
may still be warranted if joblessness remains elevated among particular 
groups of workers. The early September cutoff date means that Congress 
will need to act before the end of the fiscal year to avert a cutoff, 
which would hurt workers and their families and cause needless 
administrative headaches for State unemployment programs still 
struggling to effectively administer these expanded benefit programs.
    Helping Households Struggling To Make Ends Meet
    Housing. The Rescue Plan includes critical housing assistance for 
millions who are struggling to pay rent and avoid eviction, and badly 
needed funds for communities to address homelessness during the 
pandemic.
    The housing and homelessness funding in the Rescue Plan will 
supplement $25 billion in emergency rental assistance from December's 
relief package. The Rescue Plan builds on these efforts by providing an 
additional $21.6 billion in emergency rental assistance; this $46.6 
billion total investment will enable communities nationwide to help 
approximately 4 to 6 million households avert eviction and housing 
instability. The Rescue Plan also includes substantial resources to 
mitigate the devastating effects of homelessness. The Department of 
Housing and Urban Development's recently released 2020 Annual 
Homelessness Assessment Report shows that homelessness--especially 
unsheltered homelessness--was increasing at an alarming rate even 
before the pandemic, and communities across the country report that the 
pandemic has made things even worse. The Rescue Plan includes $5 
billion for approximately 65,000 Housing Choice Vouchers to serve 
people experiencing or at risk of homelessness, and $5 billion in HOME 
Investment Partnerships Program funding to develop approximately 20,500 
units of affordable or supportive housing for people experiencing 
homelessness or at risk of homelessness. These investments will enable 
communities to put thousands of individuals and families who have been 
extremely hard hit by the public health and economic impact of the 
pandemic on the path towards recovery.
    The Rescue Plan also includes housing resources for other highly 
impacted communities, including $750 million in housing aid for tribal 
nations and Native Hawaiians; $139 million for rural housing 
assistance; $100 million for housing counseling services for renters 
and homeowners; and $20 million to support fair housing activities. It 
also provides $10 billion to help homeowners who are experiencing 
financial hardship due to COVID-19 maintain their mortgage, tax, and 
utility payments and avoid foreclosure and displacement.
    Helping those experiencing homelessness secure housing and helping 
those behind on rent catch up and avert eviction are critical to 
fighting the pandemic itself (COVID can be more easily transmitted in 
congregate shelters, on the streets, or in over-crowded housing), 
stabilizing families, and preventing children from disruptive moves and 
school changes. Providing rental assistance to families to prevent 
evictions and homelessness--which are associated with increased 
likelihood for children with cognitive and mental health problems, 
physical health problems such as asthma, physical assaults, and poor 
school performance--can also have far-reaching implications for 
children's lives. In addition, rental assistance reduces families' 
chances of having a child placed into foster care and the frequency 
with which their children must change schools, and may improve test 
scores for some categories of children.
    Tax credits. The Rescue Plan temporarily makes the full Child Tax 
Credit available to all poor and low-income children, increases the 
size of the Child Tax Credit, and provides an expanded Earned Income 
Tax Credit (EITC) for far more low-paid adults without minor children 
at home--driving a historic reduction in child poverty and providing 
timely income support for millions of people. The expansions apply to 
tax year 2021, with part of the Child Tax Credit being delivered in 
advance later this year (rather than being delivered next year after 
households file a tax return).
    Prior to the expansion in the Rescue Plan, some 27 million children 
received a partial Child Tax Credit or no credit at all because their 
families' incomes were too low. The Rescue Plan makes the full Child 
Tax Credit available to children in families with low or no earnings, 
raises the maximum credit from $2,000 to $3,000 per child (and $3,600 
for children under age 6), and extends the credit to 17-year-olds. The 
increase in the maximum amount will begin to phase out for heads of 
households making $112,500 and married couples making $150,000. The 
Rescue Plan will lift 4.1 million additional children above the poverty 
line--cutting the number of children in poverty by more than 40 
percent--and lift 1.1 million children above half the poverty line 
(referred to as ``deep poverty''). Among the children that the Child 
Tax Credit expansion will lift above the poverty line, some 1.2 million 
are Black and 1.7 million are Latino.
    The Rescue Plan also raises the EITC for adults in low-paid jobs 
who are not raising children at home and now get only a tiny credit or 
no credit at all. It raises the maximum EITC for these ``childless 
workers'' from about $540 to about $1,500, raises the income cap for 
them to qualify from about $16,000 to at least $21,000, and expands the 
age range of those eligible to include younger adults aged 19-24 who 
aren't full-time students and those 65 and over. That will provide 
timely income support to over 17 million people who work for low pay, 
including the 5.8 million childless workers aged 19-65 (excluding full-
time students aged 19-23) who are now the lone group that the Federal 
tax code taxes into, or deeper into, poverty because their payroll 
taxes (and, for some, income taxes) exceed any EITC they receive.
    These expansions will help push against racial disparities. Before 
the Rescue Plan, about half of all Black and Latino children were 
getting only a partial Child Tax Credit or no credit at all because 
their families' incomes were too low to qualify for the full credit. 
That design flaw in the Child Tax Credit came on top of long-standing 
employment discrimination, unequal opportunity in education and 
housing, and other factors that leave more Black and Latino households 
struggling to make ends meet. Similarly, the 5.8 million childless 
adults in low-paid jobs who are taxed into, or deeper into, poverty are 
disproportionately people of color: about 26 percent are Latino and 18 
percent are Black, compared to 19 percent and 12 percent of the 
population, respectively.
    In two historic firsts, the Rescue Plan also extends a Federal 
supplement to help Puerto Rico expand its own EITC (which went into 
effect in 2019) and corrects a long-standing limitation by which only 
families with three or more children in the Commonwealth can claim the 
Child Tax Credit. It marks the first time that Puerto Rico receives 
Federal EITC dollars since the EITC was established in the continental 
U.S. nearly half a century ago, and the first time that families with 
one or two children may claim the Child Tax Credit since it was 
established in the late 1990s. Both credits will provide a crucial 
boost to hundreds of thousands of families in Puerto Rico, whose 
poverty rates of 43 percent overall and 57 percent for children are 
among the nation's highest.
    Food assistance. The Rescue Plan extends and expands nutrition 
assistance to help address today's extraordinarily high levels of 
hunger and hardship.
    The Rescue Plan extends, through September, a 15 percent increase 
in SNAP benefits from December's relief package that was slated to 
expire in June. It lets States continue, through the summer and through 
the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency, the Pandemic EBT (P-
EBT) program, which provides grocery benefits to replace meals that 
children miss when they do not attend school or child care in person. 
Extending this benefit through the summer is important, providing a 
bridge to help families until school reopens, hopefully fully in-
person, for the next school year. Food insecurity among children often 
rises in the summer when they aren't able to access school meals; these 
benefits will help families afford food over the summer.
    The Rescue Plan also provides funds to modernize the WIC nutrition 
program for low-income women, infants, and children, support innovative 
service delivery, conduct robust outreach, and temporarily raise the 
amount of fruit and vegetables that participants can get. These steps 
will improve a critical program that boosts health and cognitive 
outcomes for children but that served fewer individuals in fiscal 2020 
than the prior year despite a surge in food hardship during the 
pandemic. And it adds $1 billion to the capped block grants for food 
assistance that Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana 
Islands receive instead of SNAP, enabling them to better meet their 
residents' food needs over the next several years.
    Help for families with the lowest incomes. The Rescue Plan includes 
$1 billion for a Pandemic Emergency Assistance fund to enable States, 
tribes, and territories to help families with the lowest incomes cover 
their additional pandemic-driven expenses and avert eviction and other 
hardships. These are funds States can use flexibly to fill in gaps left 
by other investments.
    States, territories, and tribes can use the new fund to provide 
households with nonrecurrent, short-term benefits--that is, benefits 
that: (1) address a specific crisis or episode of need; (2) don't meet 
recurring or ongoing needs; and (3) don't extend beyond four months. 
States could direct funds to the families that most need them, and 
States need not limit payments to families receiving Temporary 
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash assistance. States can use 
the funds, for instance, to help families that don't get emergency 
housing assistance pay their back rent and avoid eviction, or help 
families fleeing domestic violence cover their moving costs and initial 
rental payments.
Expanding Health Care
    The Rescue Plan will make comprehensive health coverage more 
affordable and accessible for millions of people during the current 
crisis.
    Comprehensive health coverage is important under any circumstance 
because it improves people's access to care, financial security, and 
health outcomes. But preserving and extending coverage is even more 
important now, during COVID-19 and its economic fallout, because it 
will shield families from financial hardship and support public health 
efforts, easing people's access to testing, treatment, and vaccines. 
Prior to the Rescue Plan, the relief measures that policymakers enacted 
in 2020 did not extend health coverage or make it more affordable.
    To make marketplace coverage more affordable, the Rescue Plan 
eliminates or vastly reduces premiums for many people of low or 
moderate income who enroll in plans through the Affordable Care Act 
(ACA) marketplaces, and it provides new help to people with somewhat 
higher incomes who face high premiums. These provisions lower premiums 
for most current marketplace enrollees and expand coverage to 1.3 
million people who would otherwise be uninsured, according to the
    Congressional Budget Office. The Rescue Plan improves affordability 
and reduces the number of uninsured people in three other ways: (1) 
protecting marketplace enrollees, especially those whose income 
fluctuated last year, from having to repay large portions of their 
Federal premium tax credits; (2) making it easier for those getting 
unemployment benefits to afford coverage; and (3) assisting people who 
recently lost their job and want to continue their current coverage to 
afford what's known as ``COBRA'' coverage through September.
    The Rescue Plan also increases financial incentives for the 14 
States that have not implemented the ACA's Medicaid expansion to do so, 
which would provide critical coverage to nearly 4 million uninsured 
people (if all States adopted the expansion). And it will strengthen 
Medicaid coverage in other ways--for instance, with higher Federal 
matching funds to help more seniors and people with disabilities get 
services in the community instead of nursing homes, a new State option 
to extend Medicaid or Children's Health Insurance Program coverage to 
12 months after childbirth for postpartum people, and an option to 
cover uninsured people for testing, vaccines, and treatment of COVID-
19.
Boosting States, Strengthening Education
    The Rescue Plan provides $350 billion to help States, localities, 
tribal governments, and territories cover costs generated by COVID-19 
and the economic fallout and offset revenue losses, which are 
substantial in some places.
    The pandemic has imposed significant costs on State and local 
governments to fight the virus, deliver services despite public-health-
related restrictions, and help struggling people and businesses. These 
costs will continue in the months ahead even if the pandemic is 
ultimately contained. Many millions of people, particularly low-income 
people and people of color, are struggling with hunger, have large 
unpaid rent bills, face mental health challenges as a result of the 
pandemic, or are enduring other forms of hardship. Millions of children 
effectively have a year of learning they need to regain that will 
require time and resources--such as investments in longer school days, 
extended school years, and intensive tutoring for multiple years--to 
address. Households, as well as millions of struggling small 
businesses, will require support to make it through the pandemic and 
recover from its harm. While Federal support provides important direct 
assistance, State and local governments will need to deliver a wide 
range of localized supports and services and sustain them over a long 
period of time.
    While the pandemic's hit on State revenues has been less than 
feared, revenues in most States remain below prepandemic projections, 
and some States have experienced severe revenue losses. Most cities and 
counties received no direct Federal aid prior to the Rescue Plan, and 
revenue sources they depend upon--including hotel and restaurant 
charges, parking fees, and business license fees--have been hit 
particularly hard. Many tribal governments are dependent on casinos and 
other forms of revenue that have been hit especially hard.
    Along with the other costs cited above, States and the other 
jurisdictions also can use the additional Federal funding to help pay 
for long overdue investments in broadband (a need that COVID-19 
particularly exposed) and for clean water and sewer infrastructure 
projects, as well as to provide ``premium pay'' to essential public 
workers. In addition, the Rescue Plan provides a separate $10 billion 
to States, territories, and tribal nations for capital projects. To 
help ensure that States spend the Federal aid as intended, the Rescue 
Plan requires that any State or territory adopting net tax cuts lose an 
equivalent amount in Federal aid. States remain free to enact tax cuts, 
but they may lose an equivalent amount of aid if the Treasury 
Department determines that they used the aid directly or indirectly to 
fill in for the tax cuts.
    With States and localities facing so many other demands on their 
resources, the Rescue Plan also provides $123 billion in new, mostly 
flexible funds that school districts can spend through the 2023-24 
school year to address the pandemic and its effects on student 
learning. This is the largest-ever one-time Federal investment in K-12 
education, but entirely appropriate in light of school funding needs.
    Historically, K-12 schooling has been funded overwhelmingly by 
States and localities; they currently provide 92 percent of funding, 
with the Federal Government providing the rest. COVID-19, however, 
forced States to cut funding and created enormous financial and 
educational challenges that States and localities will be hard pressed 
to meet over the next several years without Federal assistance. K-12 
funding comprises about 26 percent of State budgets and, in the absence 
of the general fiscal aid and the education-specific funding, many 
States would have found it challenging to shield school funding from 
cuts. Even before COVID-19, schools endured years of inadequate and 
inequitable funding. Some 15 to 20 States were still providing less 
funding for K-12 schools when the pandemic hit than before the Great 
Recession of a decade ago in per-pupil, inflation-adjusted terms. When 
COVID-19 hit, schools were employing about 77,000 fewer teachers and 
other workers while educating about 1.5 million more children.
    The CARES Act provided $13.2 billion for K-12 education and 
December's package provided another $54 billion, but schools will need 
far more to pay for distance learning, safe in-person instruction, 
caring for students' physical and mental health, and, most 
significantly, helping children catch up from substantial unfinished 
learning. Schools need to close the ``digital divide'' so all students 
and teachers have access to devices and connectivity. They can also use 
the funding to safely operate in-person schools, which may require more 
buses and drivers and additional classrooms and teachers to maintain 
social distancing. A quarter of schools have no full- or part-time 
nurse, and most schools lack counselling support to help students 
navigate the mental-health challenges stemming from the pandemic, its 
economic fallout, and now the return to school for many students.
    But beyond addressing the costs of operating remotely and in 
person, the Rescue Plan's funds will enable school districts to make 
critical investments to address widespread unfinished learning that the 
pandemic and remote learning have caused. Students on average will 
likely lose nine months of learning by the end of the 2020-21 school 
year, McKinsey & Company estimates, and students of color may well lose 
a full year on average. With the requisite resources, schools can 
lengthen school days and the school year and invest in high-quality 
tutoring to help students--over the course of the next couple of 
years--recover what they have lost. The costs of addressing all these 
needs could easily top $100 billion over the next few years, based on 
estimates from the Learning Policy Institute and McKinsey. Along with 
the $123 billion, the Rescue Plan includes ``maintenance of equity'' 
provisions that require States to avert funding cuts to schools and 
school districts with high numbers of poor children.
Transit
    The Rescue Plan provides $30.4 billion to transit agencies, 
primarily by formula grant, to support operating costs and thereby 
prevent cuts in transit services and layoffs of transit workers.
    Transit agencies are facing severe financial stress, as ridership 
of buses and rail has declined during the pandemic, reducing revenues. 
Yet public transportation is a lifeline for those without access to 
cars who need to get to work, including essential workers and others 
who are not able to work from home or who need to travel to fulfill 
basic needs, like seeing the doctor or going to the grocery store. 
Scaling back mass transit services and laying off transit workers not 
only risks leaving millions of riders stranded, but also would leave 
transit agencies poorly positioned to support a robust recovery as the 
pandemic recedes.
    The assistance provided by the Rescue Plan should prevent damaging 
cuts, allow public transit to continue needed services, and respond 
quickly as ridership increases with a stronger economy. Public 
transportation is particularly important to low-income communities and 
communities of color, even as decades of policy choices have left many 
of these communities under-resourced and with poorer access to public 
transit. While it is crucial that these communities be protected from 
cuts in services, policymakers should also focus on designing further 
investments in public transit so that they have the potential to 
increase access to jobs and extend economic opportunity to underserved 
communities. \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \1\ Chye-Ching and Roderick Taylor, ``Any Federal Infrastructure 
Package Should Boost Investment in Low-Income Communities'', CBPP, 
updated June 28, 2019, https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/
any-federal-infrastructure-package-should-boost-investment-in-low-
income.
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Our Underlying Policy Gaps Necessitated Large, Stopgap Measures
    While the American Rescue Plan Act, along with the relief measures 
of 2020, will provide substantial help to tens of millions of people 
who are struggling to make ends meet and access health care during this 
crisis, we should ask why such large-scale stopgap measures were needed 
in the first place.
    The reason is clear: COVID-19 and its economic fallout have exposed 
glaring weaknesses in our economy and our public policies that leave 
too many people unprotected in bad times and too many unable to fully 
benefit in good times. Before the crisis began, our unemployment 
insurance system was very weak; we were providing inadequate support 
for the millions of Americans who struggle every day to pay rent, buy 
food, and afford other basics; and 29 million people lacked health 
coverage. We tolerate very high levels of poverty and hardship when 
households fall on hard times, whether because of a recession or 
another national crisis, or because, as often occurs, an employer goes 
out of business or a family member is ill and can't work. The nation 
would need fewer stopgap measures during hard times if we had stronger 
permanent policies in place to help households and workers when they 
need it.
    Other wealthy nations do far more to invest in children, to support 
workers and their households both when they are working for low pay and 
when they are out of work, to assure more adequate minimum wages, and 
to ensure that everyone can access health care. The United States can 
afford these kinds of policies as well. Failure to make these kinds of 
investments and policy changes has real costs, to individuals and the 
nation as a whole. Research shows that poverty and the hardships that 
come with it--housing instability, food insecurity, and high levels of 
family stress that can become toxic to developing children--can have 
negative long-term impacts on children's health, education, and 
earnings. There are negative impacts on adults, as well, when they 
don't have enough to eat, face eviction, and don't have access to 
health care.
    The Rescue Plan addresses many of these key policy gaps but only 
temporarily, so much of our progress will reverse once its provisions 
begin to expire--unless policymakers take steps to extend key 
provisions and make longer-term investments in key areas. The Rescue 
Plan also makes crystal clear that we can address the challenges of 
poverty and hardship if we have the will do so.
Building a More Equitable Economy
    The President and Congress will soon have a historic opportunity to 
build toward an equitable recovery where all children can reach their 
full potential, where workers in low-paid jobs and those with fewer job 
prospects have the supports to help them meet their needs and get 
ahead, and where everyone has access to affordable health coverage. 
Achieving these goals requires attacking long-standing disparities in 
our nation, deeply rooted in racism and discrimination, that have led 
to starkly unequal opportunities and outcomes in education, employment, 
health, and housing.
    This spring and summer, policymakers will work on another 
substantial legislative package, this one framed around the nation's 
recovery. As we invest in infrastructure and take steps to address 
climate change, we also must invest in an equitable recovery that 
enables everyone to share in its benefits.
    If policymakers don't take this opportunity to create a more 
equitable recovery, and instead craft a legislative package focused 
only on physical infrastructure and climate technology, future economic 
growth may be somewhat higher than if no package were enacted at all, 
but millions of households will see little benefit from that growth. 
Most people working in low-paid jobs will continue to struggle to make 
ends meet, those who lose their jobs will not have help to tide them 
over, tens of millions of people will still lack health coverage, and 
child poverty and its attendant hardships will remain high, robbing 
children of the future they deserve.
    Housing investments should be a key component of a recovery 
package. First, housing vouchers should be expanded toward the goal of 
ensuring that all households that need rental assistance can receive 
it. Housing vouchers lower the likelihood that a low-income family 
lives in crowded housing (by 52 percent) or is homeless (by 74 percent) 
and reduce their frequency of moving (by 35 percent) \2\--important 
steps for reducing school disruption and other harmful outcomes for 
children. (See Figure 6.) But just 1 in 4 eligible households receive 
any Federal rental assistance due to limited funding. Providing 
vouchers to all eligible households would lift 9.3 million people above 
the poverty line and cut the child poverty rate by one-third, according 
to a recent Columbia University study. \3\ It also would narrow the gap 
in poverty rates between white and Black households by over a third and 
the gap between white and Latino households by nearly half.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \2\ Michele Wood, Jennifer Turnham, and Gregory Mills, ``Housing 
Affordability and Family Well-Being: Results From the Housing Voucher 
Evaluation'', Housing Policy Debate, Vol. 19, No. 2, January 2008, pp. 
367-412.
     \3\ Sophie Collyer et al., ``Housing Vouchers and Tax Credits: 
Pairing the Proposals to Transform Section 8 with Expansions to the 
EITC and Child Tax Credit Could Cut the National Poverty Rate by 
Half'', Columbia University Center on Poverty and Social Policy, 
October 7, 2020.
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    As the economy recovers, high housing costs will continue to create 
economic instability and hardship for millions of low-income renters, 
increasing their risks of housing instability and homelessness and 
undercutting their children's chances of succeeding over the long term. 
Housing vouchers make rent affordable for people in low-paying jobs and 
are highly effective at reducing homelessness. They also serve as an 
important hedge against housing instability and financial hardship 
during recessions because the voucher subsidy rises when a household's 
income falls due to a lost job or work hours.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    Investments in renovating and building affordable housing also have 
an important role to play, particularly in tight housing markets. 
Carefully designed investments of this type can make rents more 
affordable for low-income households, reduce homelessness, improve 
residents' living conditions and health outcomes, and reduce racial 
inequities in housing opportunities and housing quality. They also 
generate jobs and construction activity and can lower greenhouse-gas 
emissions by making developments more energy efficient. In making such 
investments, policymakers should place a high priority on renovating 
the existing public housing stock, creating housing options for people 
experiencing homelessness, and providing substantial additional 
resources for affordable housing development through the Indian Housing 
Block Grant and National Housing Trust Fund.
    However, supply interventions alone will not address the affordable 
housing crisis. Many communities have ample supply of housing but 
housing remains unaffordable for people with modest incomes. 
Additionally, supply interventions often do not produce housing with 
rents that are low enough to be affordable for households with incomes 
near or below the poverty line--the group that makes up most of the 
renters confronting severe housing affordability challenges \4\--unless 
those households also receive a voucher or similar rental assistance. 
Voucher expansion is therefore crucial to ensuring that a recovery 
package reaches those who most need help to afford stable housing.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \4\ Seventy-four percent of renter households that paid more than 
half their income for housing in 2018 had ``extremely low-incomes,'' 
defined as incomes below the higher of the Federal poverty line or 30 
percent of the local median income. (CBPP analysis of 2018 American 
Community Survey and 2018 HUD income limit data.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Beyond housing, there are other key investments the nation needs to 
make to build toward an equitable recovery. These include:

    Help for people in low-paid jobs and people out of work. 
        Workers in low-paid jobs struggle to make ends meet, face high 
        child care costs, and often receive no help from unemployment 
        insurance when they lose a job. The recovery package can take 
        important steps to help these workers, including by shoring up 
        our unemployment insurance system so more jobless workers are 
        covered and benefits are more adequate; expanding access to 
        high-quality, affordable child care; making the Rescue Plan's 
        EITC expansion for low-paid workers without children permanent; 
        creating a paid leave program so workers can afford to take 
        time off for health issues or caregiving responsibilities; and 
        investing in job training and subsidized jobs to help people 
        succeed in the labor market and have opportunities to work.

    Key investments for children. There is strong evidence that 
        poverty, and the hardships that come with it, shortchange 
        children's long-term health and education outcomes, and that 
        investments in children can improve their trajectories 
        markedly. These include investments such as making the Rescue 
        Plan's Child Tax Credit expansion permanent, strengthening 
        nutrition programs, and investing in high quality child care 
        and early education.

    Expanded access to health coverage. The United States can 
        get far closer to universal health coverage by making 
        marketplace coverage more affordable, allowing more people to 
        purchase marketplace coverage when employer coverage isn't 
        affordable, and strengthening Medicaid coverage and ensuring 
        that individuals are able to keep their coverage for a full 
        year.

    The United States can afford to make these investments. After two 
decades of tax cuts, we should start by rebuilding our tax code so that 
the wealthiest households and large, profitable corporations contribute 
in a fair way while also rebuilding the IRS so that the taxes owed are 
collected. This would raise substantial revenue and help fund critical 
investments that promote broadly shared economic growth, broaden 
opportunity, and improve well-being among those not already well-
heeled.
Conclusion
    Over the last year, the President and Congress took bold action, 
culminating in this year's American Rescue Plan Act, to help tens of 
millions of individuals and families that were struggling in the midst 
of COVID-19 and its economic fallout. The legislation and its likely 
impact show that we know how to reduce poverty and hardship and how to 
narrow economic and racial inequities.
    But, like the CARES Act and Families First Act of last spring and 
the relief package of December, the Rescue Plan Act provides only 
temporary relief. The progress we will make under it in helping workers 
and their families, in reducing poverty and hardship, in narrowing 
economic and racial inequities, and in expanding access to health care 
will largely unravel as its provisions expire.
    As the President and Congress turn to economic recovery legislation 
this spring and summer, however, they have a historic opportunity to 
make permanent progress by addressing the underlying weaknesses in our 
economy and our public policies that made the stopgap measures of the 
last year so necessary.
                                 ______
                                 
                  PREPARED STATEMENT OF AMY K. MATSUI
 Director of Income Security and Senior Counsel, National Women's Law 
                                 Center
                             March 25, 2021
                             
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                                 ______
                                 
                   PREPARED STATEMENT OF RORY COOPER
             Public School Parent, Fairfax County, Virginia
                             March 25, 2021
    Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey, and Members of this 
distinguished Committee; thank for you for this opportunity to speak 
for what I believe are millions of parents. I have three kids currently 
in 5th grade, 2nd grade and Kindergarten. I love them very much. (I 
wanted that in the congressional record.) My children and millions of 
other children have not had access to the education they deserve for 
over a year.
    First, it's important to point out that a majority of students are 
indeed attending school in-person five days a week. President Biden's 
goal of having a majority of schools open to some degree in his first 
100 days is incomprehensible. It was achieved before he took office.
    Two thirds of public-school districts are currently open five days 
a week. Many of them have done so since the fall. Private schools are 
offering the same, often a block away from a shuttered public school. 
The districts that are failing our children are the large metropolitan 
areas where school boards are heavily controlled by powerful teacher 
unions, like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and 
Washington, D.C.
    We know schools are safe because not one person is calling on these 
open schools to close.
    Here in Fairfax County, unreasonable union demands coupled with a 
flat-footed superintendent and school board have crippled what was once 
a premier district. The goalposts keep moving as they run out the clock 
on this school year and leave students behind.
    We were told that teachers needed to vaccinated first. So, Virginia 
put them at the front of the line with healthcare workers and seniors 
over the age of 65. And then when all willing teachers in Fairfax were 
vaccinated, they said they would still not fully reopen.
    Then we were told they needed more money. The school districts that 
are currently closed are some of the best funded in the nation. Fairfax 
County is in the top ten. And schools that are closed have saved 
millions of dollars this year, while open schools have lost money. 
Fairfax County is in fact under Federal investigation for opening their 
doors to programs that paid them additional cash while keeping their 
own special needs students locked out.
    But America rallied to give them more money anyway. In the CARES 
Act, Congress appropriated $13.2 billion for K-12 COVID mitigation. In 
December, Congress appropriated an additional $54.3 billion. Despite 
most of that money remaining unspent in 2021, this Congress pursued an 
additional $126 billion in the American Rescue Plan. Nearly none of it 
to be spent in 2021. Most of this $193 billion will be spent years 
after the crisis is over.
    All of this money is distributed using Title I formulas. This means 
that Congress is rewarding large well-funded districts that remain 
closed with a huge payout while smaller less well-funded districts who 
provide in-person instruction receive less.
    The latest goal post movement has come around the issue of 6-foot 
distancing. We knew this was overcautious in 2020 because as I 
mentioned, a majority of school districts were already successfully 
ignoring it. But districts like Fairfax used it as a crutch to only 
consider hybrid learning two days a week.
    The CDC finally admitted what they already knew and recently 
reduced it to 3 feet. Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of 
Teachers said that still was not good enough and they wanted even more 
money. No science or vaccination or amount of money will ever be good 
enough. Kids just have to suffer so unions can thrive.
    And the kids are suffering greatly. We've seen a terrible spike in 
suicides, depression, anxiety and a loss of access to nutrition, 
socialization and physical health. Children with physical and learning 
disabilities who require additional support have received a minimum of 
what the law compels schools to offer. So many students are falling 
behind and failing that Fairfax County eliminated failing grades 
altogether. These are the outcomes of the union efforts.
    My children have had three-day weekends for a year. On Mondays in 
Fairfax, kids do an hour of homework in the morning and Fairfax counts 
it as a day of school so they can pretend they're meeting obligations. 
Finally, as of a week ago, my kids are now in-person two days a week. 
They are elated on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and dejected on Thursdays 
and Fridays.
    They're actually lucky. Their wonderful teachers returned to the 
classroom. Many children are in schools but still being taught on 
laptops and monitored by untrained high school graduates.
    Students are leaving public schools altogether. Fairfax County has 
lost over 10,000 students with more fleeing to parochial and private 
options. Inequality is skyrocketing and our most vulnerable populations 
are getting hit the hardest.
    I supported school closures in the spring of 2020 because we had 
very little information. But since then, the data has been vast and 
clear: Schools are safe. Public health, pediatric and psychological 
experts have nearly unanimously agreed that school closures are a 
crisis in their own right and need to end.
    It's time for science and common sense to prevail. And let's not 
wait another day. The fall is not a goal worthy of this country. It's 
just an excuse for districts like Fairfax to keep falling behind.
    We keep hearing we need more money and more time when schools have 
had plenty of both. If public school systems like Fairfax can simply 
choose to not offer in-person instruction, perhaps all of these 
billions of dollars should go to students instead so they can have 
access better choices.
    Thank you, I look forward to your questions.
                                 ______
                                 
                  PREPARED STATEMENT OF ANGELA RACHIDI
              Rowe Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
                             March 25, 2021
    Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey, and Members of the 
Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the important 
issue of helping American families emerge strong from the economic 
hardships of the pandemic. My name is Angela Rachidi and I am the Rowe 
Scholar in poverty studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where 
I have spent the past several years researching policies aimed at 
reducing poverty, increasing employment, and charting pathways to a 
better life for low-income families. Before I joined AEI, I also served 
as a Deputy Commissioner for the New York City Department of Social 
Services, where I evaluated safety net programs for low-income New 
Yorkers and studied how families experience them.
    My testimony covers three main points. First, statistics on poverty 
and income show that poverty had already fallen below prepandemic rates 
in the months leading up to the passage of President Biden's American 
Rescue Plan, which suggests the additional safety net program 
expansions included in the American Rescue Plan were excessive and 
poorly targeted to pandemic-related problems. Second, the safety net 
program expansions included in the American Rescue Plan undermine the 
successful antipoverty policies of the past quarter century by 
discouraging work and increasing the likelihood of single parenthood. 
If made permanent, these policies will make it harder for families to 
escape poverty and move up the income ladder, while slowing the 
economic recovery. Third, proponents of the American Rescue Plan have 
overstated the positive effects of this legislation while understating 
the true cost. We will see efforts in the coming months to show that 
this legislation reduced poverty and increased employment--which I have 
no doubt the short-term data will show. However, these short term gains 
will mask long-term negative consequences that will be difficult to 
reverse--such as reduced labor force participation, more children born 
to single parents, and entrenched poverty for more Americans.
Getting the Context Right
    The pandemic that hit in March 2020 was unprecedented and the 
employment disruptions that followed caused a great deal of hardship 
for many families. Congress acted swiftly and comprehensively by 
passing three major pieces of legislation to address the public health 
crisis and resulting economic fallout--the Families First Act and the 
CARES Act in March 2020, followed by the Consolidated Appropriations 
Act in December 2020--totaling $3.5 trillion in Federal pandemic-
related spending over the past year. \1\ These packages included 
tremendous supports for workers and families who faced economic 
hardships because of the pandemic, including expansions to food 
assistance, unemployment compensation, housing assistance, and direct 
payments from the Federal Government, among other things.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \1\ ``Here's Everything the Federal Government Has Done to Respond 
to the Coronavirus So Far'', Peter G. Peterson Foundation, March 15, 
2021. https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/03/heres-everything-congress-has-
done-to-respond-to-the-coronavirus-so-far.
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    As a result, the poverty rate before Congress passed the American 
Rescue Plan, when properly measured, was even lower than it was before 
the pandemic. Using a supplemental poverty measure from researchers at 
Columbia University, which accounts for many important Government 
benefits that are left out by official poverty measure, the poverty 
rate in January 2021 (after the December 2020 economic relief package 
and before the American Rescue Plan) was almost 3 percentage points 
lower than it was in January 2020. \2\ Even income poverty measures, 
which fail to account for Government benefits like nutrition 
assistance, show stable poverty trends over the past year. \3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \2\ Zachary Parolin and Megan Currie, ``Monthly poverty rate 
declines to 13.2 percent in the United States in January 2021'', 
Columbia University Center on Poverty and Social Policy, https://
static1.squarespace.com/static/5743308460b5e922a25a6dc7/t/
604278f5209e047195f32808/1614969077778/Monthly-Poverty-Factsheet-Jan-
2021-CPSP.pdf.
     \3\ Jeehoon Han, Bruce Meyer, and James Sullivan, ``Real-time 
Poverty Estimates During the COVID-19 Pandemic Through February 2021'', 
Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities at the University of 
Notre Dame and University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, 
March 18, 2021. http://povertymeasurement.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/
03/Monthly-poverty-rates-updated-thru-Feb-2021-v4.pdf.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    These trends show that Government relief efforts effectively 
prevented spikes in poverty and shielded vulnerable families from 
hardship in the months following the start of the pandemic. Additional 
research shows that households higher up the income distribution even 
experienced aggregate income increases in the months following the 
pandemic, largely due to Government relief efforts such as expanded 
unemployment insurance. \5\ Government economic relief efforts helped 
many families weather the economic fallout of the pandemic well through 
February 2021. This begs the question of why Congress passed such a 
large ``rescue'' package in recent weeks.
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     \4\ Parolin and Curran, ``Monthly poverty rate declines to 13.2 
percent in the Unites States in January 2021.''
     \5\ Natalie Cox, et al., ``Initial Impacts of the Pandemic on 
Consumer Behavior: Evidence From the Linked Income, Spending, and 
Savings Data'', Brooking Institution, Brookings Papers on Economic 
Activity, June 25, 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/
2020/06/Cox-et-al-conference-draft-Final.pdf.
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The American Rescue Plan
    As you know, the American Rescue Plan totaled $1.9 trillion and 
included many spending provisions aimed at low-income families. Given 
the context of the data that I just described, these spending programs 
have very little to do with the pandemic. Instead, they expand Federal 
Government spending in ways that are excessive and undermine the 
successful antipoverty policies of the past quarter century by 
weakening the connection between the safety net and employment. We have 
learned over the past 25 years that employment offers the best path out 
of poverty and our safety net policies are most effective when they 
support rather than supplant earnings.
    I want to highlight three specific provisions in the American 
Rescue Plan that I believe have the greatest potential to make economic 
opportunity harder for families: expansions to the Child Tax Credit, 
increases in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and 
unemployment insurance extensions.
    The Child Tax Credit. The American Rescue Plan increased the amount 
of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) from $2,000 per child to $3,600 for 
children under age 6 and $3,000 for older children, paid out in regular 
installments. The American Rescue Plan also extended the full credit to 
families without any employment in the household. Before, the credit 
phased in as families started earning income, ensuring the benefit was 
linked to work.
    Expanding the CTC to nonworking families risks reducing employment 
and impeding the path out of poverty for too many families, especially 
for the most vulnerable--such as single mothers. Economic theory 
suggests that cash payments from the Government will decrease 
employment because they substitute work income, and the literature 
shows that this risk is real. My colleague at AEI, Scott Winship, 
recently summarized this literature, highlighting the need for caution 
when expanding Government benefits in ways that undermine employment. 
\6\ Without work, families will spend more time in poverty and face 
fewer options to become self-reliant and move up the income ladder.
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     \6\ Scott Winship, ``The Conservative Case Against a Child 
Allowance'', American Enterprise Institute, March 5, 2021. https://
www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/The-conservative-case-against-
child-allowances.pdf?x91208.
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    I experienced this first-hand after spending much of my career 
working for the New York City Department of Social Services. 
Unrestricted Government cash payments proved to be a poor substitute 
for employment after the welfare reforms of the 1990s. When Government 
assistance became time limited and connected to work, employment 
increased and poverty declined in New York and across the country. \7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \7\ Angela Rachidi, ``Welfare reform cut child poverty in half. 
What will President Biden's American Rescue Plan do?'', American 
Enterprise Institute, AEIdeas, March 12, 2021.
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    My other concern about expanding the CTC to nonworking families is 
that it will sever the ties that these families have to job training 
and other critical supports through existing programs, such as the 
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and will make it less 
likely that low-income single mothers will access the Child Support 
Enforcement program. \8\ TANF provides cash assistance, job search 
assistance, and job training to participating parents, while child 
support engages noncustodial parents, secures financial support for 
children, and results in financial and emotional benefits for children. 
If cash assistance through TANF becomes less necessary, nonworking 
parents will have less access to important supports that help them 
enter the labor market and less access to support from the other 
parent.
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     \8\ Angela Rachidi, ``The Unintended Downsides of Child Allowance 
Proposals'', The Dispatch, February 25, 2021. https://thedispatch.com/
p/the-unintended-downside-of-childhood.
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    The experience of welfare reform also teaches us that unrestricted 
cash payments from the Government, like the expanded CTC, make single 
parenthood more likely. A review of the literature on the relationship 
between the Government assistance and fertility found that unrestricted 
cash payments increased single parenthood and reduced marriage, 
although the size of the effects in some cases were small. \9\ The 
American Rescue Plan returns us to this system. Further, the plan also 
undermines marriage by providing the full CTC to all low-income 
families and tripling the childless earned income tax credit (EITC), 
thus worsening the marriage penalties built into the existing EITC.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \9\ Robert Moffitt, ``The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families 
Program'', in Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, 
2003.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Prior to the 
American Rescue Plan, Congress had already authorized substantial 
expansions to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that 
addressed the food needs of low-income households. All States received 
authorization to issue ``emergency allotments'' through at least this 
month, which increased average benefits by approximately 40 percent for 
a total obligated amount for Fiscal Year 2020 (ending September 30, 
2020) of $95.4 billion. This was before Congress authorized an across-
the-board 15 percent increase in maximum SNAP benefits in the December 
2020 relief package, which Congress extended until September 2021 in 
the American Rescue Plan. As long as a Federal or State public health 
emergency remains in effect, SNAP households will receive the maximum 
benefit plus 15 percent, no matter their income.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    I have two concerns with these SNAP expansions. First, the American 
Rescue Plan poorly target households that have reported food problems. 
Second, the SNAP expansions in this package further undermine 
employment by worsening work disincentives, which will slow the 
economic recovery and increase the chances that families will remain 
poor.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \10\ U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, 
``Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Fiscal Year (FY) 
2021 Maximum Allotments and Deductions'', January 1, 2021. https://fns-
prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/media/file/FY21-COVID%20ARPA-
Maximum-Allotments-Deductions.pdf.
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    My colleague Scott Winship and I found last fall that early reports 
suggesting doubling and tripling rates of food hardship were 
exaggerated, and that food access problems among households following 
the pandemic were only slightly elevated. \11\ Given this context, 
expansions to SNAP through the American Rescue Plan have not been 
justified, and they risk reducing employment for many households, 
ultimately slowing the economic recovery by making work less important 
for some households.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \11\ Scott Winship and Angela Rachidi, ``Has Hunger Swelled'', 
American Enterprise Institute, October 22, 2020. https://www.aei.org/
research-products/report/has-hunger-swelled/; and Lauren Bauer, ``The 
COVID-19 crisis has already left too many children hungry in America,'' 
Brookings Institution, May 6, 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-
front/2020/05/06/the-covid-19-crisis-has-already-left-too-many-
children-hungry-in-america/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The SNAP increases also poorly target the households who have 
reported problems affording food during the pandemic. According to the 
COVID Impact Survey, the vast majority of people who reported not 
having enough food are not SNAP recipients. \12\ This suggests that 
efforts to increase the size and scope of SNAP have little to do with 
addressing food problems caused by the pandemic and more to do with 
increasing the footprint of the Federal Government. Research shows that 
SNAP reduces employment, suggesting that efforts to extend it to a 
larger share of US households will undermine economic recovery efforts. 
\13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \12\ Angela Rachidi, ``Food Insufficiency Rates Remain Stable 
Despite Reduced Federal Assistance'', American Enterprise Institute, 
AEIdeas, September 10, 2020, https://www.aei.org/poverty-studies/food-
insufficiency-rates-remain-stable-despite-reduced-federal-assistance/.
     \13\ Hilary Hoynes and Diane Schazenbach, ``Work Incentives and 
the Food Stamp Program'', Journal of Public Economics 96, no. 1-2 
(2012): 151-162.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    Unemployment Insurance. Most economists believe that generous 
unemployment benefits reduce exits from unemployment, although they 
debate the precise size of the effect. \15\ In a recent paper, 
economists from the University of Chicago found that the disincentive 
effects of unemployment compensation expansions shortly after the 
pandemic were less than expected, \16\ leading some commentators to 
suggest that generous pandemic-related unemployment benefits will not 
affect employment. However, these findings came during a time when job 
vacancies were extremely low and there was a great deal of uncertainty 
around the public health crisis. With the employment situation 
improving rapidly and the public health situation becoming clearer due 
to the vaccines, the American Rescue Plan still extended Federal 
unemployment benefits through September 2021. This will likely 
influence behavior around job seeking and slow the economic recovery.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \14\ Rachidi, ``Food Insufficiency Rates Remain Stable Despite 
Reduced Federal Assistance''.
     \15\ See Bruce Meyer and Wallace Mok, ``A Short Review of Recent 
Evidence on the Disincentive Effects of Unemployment Insurance and New 
Evidence from New York State'', National Tax Journal, March 2014, 
https://harris.uchicago.edu/files/shortreview.pdf.
     \16\ Peter Ganong, et al. ``Spending and Job Search Impacts of 
Expanded Unemployment Benefits: Evidence from Administrative Micro 
Data'', BFI Working Paper, February 10, 2021, https://bfi.uchicago.edu/
working-paper/spending-and-job-search-impacts-of-expanded-ui/.
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    Childcare, School Closings and Maternal Labor Force Participation. 
The economic recovery will also suffer if labor force participation 
among mothers does not rebound fully. Analysis from the Minneapolis 
Federal Reserve shows that the labor force participation among fathers 
and mothers declined in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, but 
mothers have been slower to reenter the labor force. \17\ This is 
because the caretaking responsibilities associated with closed or 
partially closed schools, along with fears over sending young children 
to childcare centers, has disproportionately fallen on mothers. \18\ 
These labor force participation declines are especially acute for 
mothers without a college degree, suggesting that low-income mothers 
are at particular risk for long-term employment challenges.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \17\ Tyler Boesch, et al., ``Pandemic Pushes Mothers of Young 
Children Out of the Labor Force'', Minneapolis Federal Reserve, 
February 2, 2021, https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2021/pandemic-
pushes-mothers-of-young-children-out-of-the-labor-force.
     \18\ Misty Heggeness, ``Why Is Mommy So Stressed? Estimating the 
Immediate Impact of the COVID-19 Shock on Parental Attachment to the 
Labor Market and the Double Bind of Mothers'', Minneapolis Federal 
Reserve, October 2020, https://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/
institute-working-papers/why-is-mommy-so-stressed-estimating-the-
immediate-impact-of-the-covid-19-shock-on-parental-attachment-to-the-
labor-market-and-the-double-bind-of-mothers.
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    I can personally attest to the substantial difficulties for 
families and children when schools fail to open for in-person learning. 
In fact, I am speaking to you from Morocco (my husband's native 
country) after relocating my family from the US so that my four 
children can attend school in person. Until January of this year, my 
three oldest were attending public school virtually and like so many 
children, they struggled with virtual learning and lost seven months of 
critical learning time. My children struggled even though they had two 
parents at home to offer guidance and supervision. Many low-income 
children do not have the same supports and they have suffered the most 
from learning and socialization loss. It is a tragedy that after a full 
year so many children in the U.S. still do not have access to full-time 
in-person school. It remains crucial that schools open fully for in-
person learning and I urge Congress to do whatever is in your power to 
make that a reality.
Impacts of the American Rescue Plan on Poverty
    Turning to my last point, proponents of the American Rescue Plan 
overstate the projected impacts of its provisions on poverty, using it 
as a justification for further Government expansions. Meanwhile, the 
poverty rates after the December 2020 relief package were already below 
prepandemic rates. Estimates suggest that the American Rescue Plan as a 
whole will reduce child poverty by approximately one-half, and because 
a disproportionate share of children in poverty are Black and Hispanic, 
the poverty-reducing aspects of the legislation will disproportionately 
benefit them. \19\ However, it is important to distinguish short-term 
and long-term poverty effects and consider whether the American Rescue 
Plan will offer children long-term security against poverty.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \19\ Laura Wheaton, et al., ``2021 Poverty Projections: Assessing 
Four American Rescue Plan Policies'', Urban Institute, March 2021, 
https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/103794/2021-
poverty-projections-assessing-four-american-rescue-plan-policies-0-
0.pdf; Zachary Parolin, et al., ``The Potential Poverty Reduction 
Effect of the American Rescue Plan'', Columbia Center on Poverty and 
Social Policy, March 11, 2021. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/
5743308460b5e922a25a6dc7/t/604aa2465cfc4a35b8a1c236/1615503943944/
Poverty-Reduction-Analysis-American-Rescue-Plan-CPSP-2021.pdf.
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    Most of the poverty-reducing aspects of the American Rescue Plan 
come from the one-time stimulus payments, not from the expanded CTC or 
other safety net expansions. Thus, making the safety net program 
expansions in this package permanent would have only a small effect on 
short-term child poverty, while discouraging employment and making it 
harder to for parents to form intact families. Discouraging employment 
will mean more low-income people out of the labor market for longer, 
which can lead to skill atrophy, making it harder for people to reenter 
the labor market eventually. This will have long-term negative impacts 
on poverty rates, and will make a strong economic recovery harder.
    Even more concerning is that these program expansions directly 
contradict the policies that have successfully led to child poverty 
reductions over the past quarter century. The often-cited National 
Academies of Sciences Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty concluded that 
poverty reduced by almost one-half because of policy changes that 
expanded the EITC and conditioned Government assistance on employment 
in the 1990s. \20\ According to the report, the child poverty rate was 
28 percent in 1993; by 2016 it was 15.6 percent--a 44 percent 
reduction.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \20\ Angela Rachidi, ``Welfare Reform Cut Child Poverty in Half. 
What Will President Biden's American Rescue Plan do?'' American 
Enterprise Institute, AEIdeas, March 12, 2021. https://www.aei.org/
poverty-studies/welfare-reform-cut-child-poverty-in-half-what-will-
president-bidens-american-rescue-plan-do/
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    These historic poverty reductions have disproportionately 
benefitted Black and Hispanic children. The gap in poverty rates 
between Black and White children, and Hispanic and White children has 
narrowed substantially since the welfare reforms of the 1990s, 
benefitting millions of children. Changes enacted by the American 
Rescue Plan risk reversing this progress and returning us to high 
poverty rates of the past.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \21\ National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 
2019, ``A Roadmap To Reducing Child Poverty'', Washington, DC: The 
National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25246
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

Conclusion
    We know how to cut poverty in this country. Policies that support 
employment and intact families have successfully reduced child poverty 
in the US by one-half since the welfare reforms of the 1990s. The 
American Rescue Plan reverses those policies by expanding unconditional 
cash payments to nonworking families, jeopardizing the policy successes 
over the past 30 years.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \22\ Angela Rachidi, ``The Child Poverty Gap by Race and Ethnicity 
Has Shrunk in the U.S.'', American Enterprise Institute, February 4, 
2020. https://www.aei.org/poverty-studies/the-child-poverty-gap-by-
race-and-ethnicity-has-shrunk-in-the-us/.
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    Thank you for the opportunity to comment and I look forward to 
taking your questions.