Joe Biden Has Barely Expanded the Welfare State
Remember all that talk of Joe Biden being the next FDR? Going into the midterms, the most he's going to deliver is one minor tweak to the welfare state — hardly the sweeping measures to help workers and the poor that we were promised.
Joe Biden speaking on the Inflation Reduction Act at the White House in Washington, DC on July 28, 2022. (Oliver Contreras / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden proposed a lot of additions to the US welfare state. These included:
Enacting paid family leave.
Enacting childcare subsidies.
Enacting universal pre-K.
Increasing the Child Tax Credit (CTC), eliminating the CTC phase-in, and paying it out monthly.
Increasing the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit.
Increasing allowed contributions to Dependent Care Flexible Savings Accounts.
Increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Increasing monthly Social Security benefits for very old Americans.
Increasing the Social Security special minimum benefit.
Increasing the Social Security survivors benefit.
Increasing the maximum Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefit for disabled people.
Eliminating the five-month waiting period for receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI).
Eliminating the two-year waiting period to receive Medicare for individuals on SSDI.
Expanding the Medicaid long-term support and services program.
Creating a public option for health insurance.
Providing insurance to uninsured people in the Medicaid gap.
Increasing the premium subsidies for exchange insurance plans.
Some of these policies were enacted temporarily as part of the American Rescue Plan (ARP). Others were in initial drafts of the Build Back Better (BBB) legislation.
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