As Congress continues to debate the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion relief package to assist those financially impacted by COVID-19, Utah Senator Mitt Romney has proposed to have the federal government provide families with $350 per child every month under the age of 6 and $250 for children between 6 and 17-years-old in a plan that will help combat child poverty.
As cited by the Huffpost, under Romney’s Family Security Act, families will earn a total of $4,200 per year for every child up to the age of 6, and $3,000 per year for every child age 6 to 17.
“We have not comprehensively reformed our family support system in nearly three decades, and our changing economy has left millions of families behind,” Romney said in a statement Thursday. “Now is the time to renew our commitment to families to help them meet the challenges they face as they take on most important work any of us will ever do—raising our society’s children.”
Romney’s proposal is similar to the one that is in Biden’s stimulus package. The U.S. has some of the highest child poverty rates in the developed world, being one of the only countries that doesn’t pay parents a child benefit or child allowance. This relief package would significantly alter that.
However, Romney’s Family Security Act would be paid for, in part, by halting welfare programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families as well as other existing federal tax credits for children and working families, which is something that the Democrats will likely oppose when this proposal is being debated. Both Romney’s plan and the Biden administration’s plan will be debated in Congress over the next few weeks.
