Abby McCloskey, Bloomberg Opinion, March 4, 2026

what if the amount given to support families wasn’t either a trickling faucet struggling to keep up with inflation or a budget-exploding flood of spending? Something like a firehose — powerful yet targeted — that could actually douse the affordability fires families are facing?

I’m thinking about a bipartisan proposal now long forgotten. The Advancing Support for Working Families Act of 2019 would have allowed parents of a newborn or newly adopted child (under age six) to receive a lump sum of $5,000 immediately, paid for by a commensurate 10% reduction in child tax credit benefits thereafter.

At the time, the proposal was panned because it was framed by its cosponsors — former Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema and Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy — as providing paid leave, which it most certainly did not. Then it got pushed aside by the Covid pandemic and the controversy of souped-up monthly child tax credit payments, a program resembling universal basic income.

But the idea of frontloading these payments is nevertheless a good one.