Thread by @Heritage

Welfare desperately needs reform—but expanding benefits and eliminating work requirements while allowing anti-marriage penalties will not truly help the poor.

Here's how President Biden’s plan to expand child credits restores welfare as we knew it:

President Biden and some in Congress are calling for a massive increase in welfare cash aid while undoing work requirements could erase gains made since the 1996 welfare reform.

The administration suggests these changes would be limited to a single year to help families suffering under the COVID-19 recession—but the Biden plan is similar to legislation that would create permanent new entitlements.

Advocates claim that this proposal would reduce child poverty—but the U.S. spent nearly $500 billion on means-tested cash, food, housing, and medical care for poor and low-income families with children.

How can America spend so much and still have a problem with child poverty?

Because the government doesn't count almost any of that $500 billion in its main, official measures of poverty or economic inequality.

The Biden proposal to add another $78 billion would have zero impact on the official measure of child poverty.

True reform of the welfare system would make it more transparent, encourage work, self-sufficiency, and marriage, and pay for good outcomes rather than ineffective services.

Read more: heritage.org/welfare/report…