Biden’s COVID Relief Bill Is the Biggest Anti-Poverty Program in . . . Months

The Biden administration is selling its COVID relief bill as a historic milestone in the war on poverty. In reality, it's a temporary measure whose anti-poverty impact is roughly the same as last year's CARES Act signed by Trump. For Biden to claim an anti-poverty legacy, he needs to make the child benefit permanent.

US President Joe Biden arrival

US president Joe Biden walks to the White House on March 17, 2021. (Demetrius Freeman / the Washington Post via Getty Images)


“Barack was so modest,” Joe Biden told a recent gathering of House Democrats. “He didn’t want to take, as he said, a ‘victory lap.’”

Biden was talking about Obama’s reticence to make political hay out of the 2009 stimulus bill.

“I kept saying, ‘Tell people what we did.’ He said, ‘We don’t have time, I’m not going to take a victory lap,’ and we paid a price for it, ironically, for that humility.”

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