James Greenwood: American Rescue Plan offers helping hand to struggling Americans

Poverty in America is defined for a family of four as less than $70 per day. That’s about $2,100 a month for food, rent, utilities, transportation, clothing and everything else.

The good news is that between 2015 and 2020, the poverty rate in America gradually declined to 10.5%, the lowest since estimates were first published in 1959. Child poverty rate was at its lowest since 1973.

The bad news is that it still left 55 million Americans poor.

Then came covid. Eight million Americans were forced out of work and fell into poverty.

In March, Congress responded with the CARES Act, sending one-time checks of $1,200 per individual, $2,400 a couple and $500 for each child, increasing unemployment benefits, creating the Paycheck Protection Program providing forgivable loans to small businesses, loans for corporations, and subsidies to state and local governments. Millions were lifted temporarily.

As the pandemic reached its devastating peak in December and unemployed Americans faced a “benefit cliff,” Congress and President Trump extended benefits again.

Now the next cliff looms even larger than it was in December. Eleven million Americans will lose unemployment benefits in April. Job growth has stalled over the last three months.

We can see a light at the end of the tunnel as vaccines are becoming increasingly available. But just as this is not the time to drop our guard on wearing masks and maintaining social distance, it is not the time to drop the safety net providing access to food and shelter for those hit hardest by the pandemic-ravaged economy. There are still over 10 million unemployed Americans, 4 million of whom have been out of work for at least six months.

President Biden has asked Congress to pass his American Rescue Plan — a $1.9 trillion bill to build a bridge to the end of this crisis.

I was elected to Congress in 1992 and was part of the Gingrich revolution bent on balancing the budget and reducing the national debt. I still consider myself a deficit hawk and don’t like social programs that promote chronic dependency.

But the covid pandemic and its shattering impact on our economy will not last much longer. Life will return to, at least, a new normal and the economy will surge. We must dig deep and provide the revenues necessary to accelerate the pace of vaccinations, open our schools and support small businesses.

More than two-thirds of Americans support the American Rescue Plan. Republicans and Democrats can differ over the appropriate eligibility limits for benefits and whether this is the right legislative vehicle to address the federal minimum wage limit, but they should be able to agree on the need to keep extended the hand to those American men, women and children just trying to survive the last phase of this disaster.

James Greenwood, a Republican U.S. congressman from 1993-2005, is a member of Republicans for Integrity.