特朗普和哈里斯体现了在消除贫困问题上的鲜明党派分歧
【中美创新时报2024 年 8 月 27 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）副总统卡马拉·哈里斯和前总统唐纳德·特朗普之间的总统竞选是至少一代人以来反贫困政策最激烈的冲突，其结果可能会影响数百万低收入美国人的经济安全。《纽约时报》记者杰森·德帕尔（Jason DeParle）对此作了下述详细报道。
随着 2020 年初疫情的爆发威胁到经济的崩溃，特朗普签署了一项大型刺激计划，其中包括对穷人的大量援助。当拜登总统和哈里斯于 2021 年上任时，他们的政府推动国会扩大援助，作为他们疫情恢复计划的一部分，进一步降低了贫困率。
但如果两位候选人对那段特殊时期的反应有共同之处，那么他们从中吸取的教训就大不相同了。
在疫情期间实施的计划中，现在大部分计划都已到期或缩减，哈里斯和其他民主党人对政府减轻困难的能力的信心得到了增强。如果当选，她将寻求维持或扩大其中许多计划，包括食品、医疗保健和住房补贴，并恢复对儿童税收抵免的改革，该政策实质上为有孩子的家庭创造了有保障的收入。这些政策暂时帮助将贫困率从疫情前的水平降低了一半以上。
她支持共和党人反对的 15 美元联邦最低工资，并积极支持旨在帮助平衡工作和家庭的补贴儿童保育和带薪家庭假等计划。
特朗普很少谈及他在疫情期间扶贫计划中的作用，许多共和党人认为这些计划过度且欺诈行为猖獗。相反，他吹捧 2017 年的减税政策，他认为这些政策促进了经济发展，并将贫困率降至疫情前的最低水平，并承诺明年减税到期后将延长这些政策。这些削减的大部分直接收益都流向了企业和富人。
特朗普的扶贫计划在其他方面都很模糊，但他的记录显示他对哈里斯将捍卫或扩大的计划充满敌意。他试图取消数百万人的医疗补助和食品券，其中许多人是低薪工人。他试图减少享受补贴住房的人数并提高他们的租金。
虽然民主党人将在疫情政策的基础上继续推进，但共和党人将拜登和哈里斯领导下的数万亿美元联邦支出归咎于引发通胀，并表示援助阻碍了工作。
候选人的竞选方式和执政方式往往有所不同，任何一位候选人执行政策的能力都将取决于谁控制国会。
两位候选人都缺乏细节，党内也存在分歧。特朗普的竞选搭档、俄亥俄州参议员 JD Vance 最近建议为有孩子的家庭提供大量税收抵免，尽管目前尚不清楚这是否会提供给穷人或是否得到了特朗普的支持。
但是他们在任期间的记录为他们的优先事项和方法提供了路线图。
当特朗普执政第一年赢得减税政策时，贫困率已经在下降，但在接下来的两年里，下降速度增加了一倍多，达到 2019 年的 11.8%，创下历史新低，这是使用包括税收和援助在内的人口普查局数据得出的。尽管经济学家对减税是否是罪魁祸首存在争议，但这一事件增强了共和党对减税的信心。
尽管如此，根据哥伦比亚大学贫困与社会政策中心对人口普查数据的分析，如果没有针对食品、住房、医疗保健和其他需求的安全网计划（其中许多计划是特朗普试图削减的），当年的贫困美国人数量将是现在的两倍。该中心主任克里斯托弗·威默说：“我不明白你怎么能说这些计划没有起到作用。”
当疫情援助开始实施时，贫困率进一步下降，在特朗普执政的 2020 年降至 9.1%，在拜登政府执政的第一年降至 7.8%。尽管发生了危机，但与疫情前的水平相比，这一数字减少了三分之一。随着援助的减少，2022 年的贫困率上升至 12.4%，这是有数据可查的最后一年。
没有任何一项反贫困措施比医疗保健花费更多、影响更多人或分裂两党。2010 年的《平价医疗法案》（即奥巴马医改）让数百万人加入了医疗补助计划，为私人保险提供补贴，并将没有保险的美国人的比例削减了近一半。民主党人认为这是一代人的成就。
共和党人表示，这项法案给政府和消费者带来了太多成本，扼杀了创新。他们投票废除该法案数十次，而特朗普高调的废除努力也仅以微弱优势失败。随后，他采取行动，压制私人计划的注册人数，并在去年写道：“奥巴马医改糟透了！”
特朗普表示，他不再致力于废除该法案，但会使其“好得多”，但没有说明如何改进。共和党研究委员会是众议院共和党中与特朗普结盟的一个派系，该委员会最近提议在 10 年内削减 4.2 万亿美元的补贴、医疗补助和儿童健康保险计划，削减幅度超过一半。民主党人称这些计划是废除法案的另一个名字。
哈里斯此前支持“全民医保”的版本，即政府为所有人运营的系统，但现在她表示将专注于加强《平价医疗法案》。她的竞选团队表示，她将保留私人计划补贴的临时增加，这导致注册人数创下了历史新高。拜登白宫的最新预算还寻求为共和党拒绝扩大医疗补助的 10 个州的民众提供新的援助。
现代食品券计划是在半个世纪前根据两党协议创建的，并断断续续地获得了两党的支持。但在经济大衰退期间，申请者人数大幅增加后，共和党对该计划的批评愈演愈烈。
特朗普尤其批评该计划，认为该计划阻碍了工作并引发欺诈。布鲁金斯学会罗伯特·格林斯坦即将发表的分析显示，他一再寻求缩小资格并扩大工作要求，他发布的每一份预算都会将这项计划的支出削减至少 25%。特朗普曾指控滥用职权，并警告称将出现“食品券犯罪浪潮”。
共和党人认为这是“福利”，而民主党人则认为这是“营养支持”。哈里斯在担任参议员期间表示，补充营养计划（食品券的正式名称）“不仅必须得到保护，还必须扩大”，同时提议大幅增加儿童福利。
拜登政府不顾共和党人的反对修改营养标准，将平均福利提高了四分之一以上，这是该计划历史上最大的增幅。现在大约八分之一的美国人每月可获得约 210 美元的福利。
在疫情期间，向所有学生提供的免费学校餐也引发了类似的争论。支持者表示，全民餐减少了耻辱感，拜登政府改变了该计划的规则，鼓励更多学校提供全民餐。共和党人认为这是浪费开支。至少有八个州采用了全民餐，包括明尼苏达州，哈里斯的竞选搭档、州长蒂姆·沃尔兹支持这一改变。
拜登和哈里斯在 2020 年的竞选中开辟了新局面，他们的党纲承诺“为每个符合条件的家庭”提供住房援助，寻求解决资金短缺问题，导致只有四分之一的符合条件的家庭得到帮助，等待时间长达数年。
但他们几乎没有取得任何进展。
拜登和哈里斯在 2021 年“重建美好未来”计划中扩大了对穷人的住房援助，这是一项数万亿美元的国内举措。它将翻新公共住房，并大幅增加可用于租用私人公寓的代金券数量。国会以微弱优势否决了该计划（保守派传统基金会称其为“美国历史上最大的福利增长”），政府也没有以重大方式重新讨论这一问题。
尽管哈里斯在最近的经济计划中强调了住房问题，但她关注的是购房者和住房生产，而不是对贫困租房者的补贴。今年的党纲削减了承诺将代金券扩大到低收入退伍军人和离开寄养家庭的人的雄心。
特朗普追求的是相反的目标。他提议将住房券减少 25 万，即约 10%，这一削减幅度与拜登-哈里斯团队提议的增幅大致相同。他寻求新的工作要求和租金上涨，但没有成功。他还废除了一项旨在减少种族歧视的备受瞩目的规定，称这将“摧毁郊区”。拜登政府一直在努力恢复这项规定，但尚未最终确定新规定。
在一个问题上，两位候选人有时听起来一样：特朗普和哈里斯帮助扩大了儿童税收抵免，两人都对此吹嘘不已。但他们支持的计划截然不同。
特朗普在 2017 年的减税措施中将抵免额增加了一倍，为每个孩子提供高达 2,000 美元的补贴，以分担抚养孩子的费用。但他的措施忽略了最贫困的儿童。大约三分之一的儿童未能获得全额抵免，因为他们的父母收入太少，十分之一的儿童一无所获。共和党人看到了一个简单的原则：减税帮助的是纳税人，而不是支付很少或根本不支付联邦所得税的低收入人群。
民主党在疫情期间修改了税收抵免政策，暂时将其提高到每名儿童 3,000 美元（最小的孩子为 3,600 美元）。最值得注意的是，这笔钱发放给了所有贫困和中产阶级儿童，无论父母是否有工作。这使一项税收抵免变成了一项美国从未接受过的政策：为有孩子的家庭提供有保障的收入，一年的费用超过 1000 亿美元。由于这项税收抵免和其他疫情援助，儿童贫困率比疫情前的水平下降了一半以上。
这项措施在一年后到期，拜登政府在共和党的一致反对下，未能延长该措施。税收抵免恢复到特朗普时代的形式，儿童贫困率回升至 2018 年以来的最高水平。
哈里斯称恢复广泛税收抵免是当务之急，并将为婴儿增加 6,000 美元的福利。在明尼苏达州，沃尔兹获得了 1,750 美元的州税收抵免，其中包括所有低收入和中等收入家庭。 “这就是让儿童摆脱贫困的方法，”他说。
大多数共和党人称此类计划为福利计划，警告称无条件现金援助会阻碍工作和婚姻，导致更多的贫困。
几周前，万斯在一次电视采访中表示，他可能会支持每名儿童 5,000 美元的抵免额，这似乎固定的界限变得模糊。他与同情工人阶级援助的保守派系有松散的联系，一些人认为他的言论是重新定位党派的努力。但万斯并没有说穷人是否有资格，对他的竞选团队的询问也没有得到答复。
对穷人的援助部分取决于税收政策：更多的收入使提供帮助变得更容易；更少的收入使提供帮助变得更加困难。两位候选人在很多方面存在分歧。
特朗普将永久延长明年到期的 2017 年减税政策，十年内将花费约 4 万亿美元，受益者集中在企业和最富有的美国人身上。共和党人认为，这些成本可以通过增加增长和减少支出来抵消。但他之前的减税措施导致赤字膨胀。
他在任期间的每一份预算提案都寻求大幅削减医疗补助和食品券。自由派组织预算与政策优先中心的分析发现，他将把非国防可自由支配支出占经济的比例降至自赫伯特·胡佛以来的最低水平。
哈里斯竞选团队表示，她将保留对收入 40 万美元或以下家庭的减税政策，约占美国人的 98%。政府最近于 3 月公布的预算还要求在未来十年对企业和富人征收约 5 万亿美元的新税。
它旨在将新收入分配给赤字削减和新计划，包括哈里斯的两个优先事项：包括最贫困家庭的 3,000 美元儿童税收抵免和带薪家庭假。
本文最初发表于《纽约时报》。
附原英文报道：
Trump and Harris embody a stark partisan divide on fighting poverty
By Jason DeParle New York Times,Updated August 26, 2024
WASHINGTON — The presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump presents the sharpest clash in antipoverty policy in at least a generation, and its outcome could shape the economic security of millions of low-income Americans.
As the onset of the pandemic in early 2020 threatened to decimate the economy, Trump signed a large stimulus package that included substantial aid for the poor. When President Biden and Harris took office in 2021, their administration pushed more aid expansions through Congress as part of their pandemic-recovery plan, driving the poverty rate still lower.
But if the two candidates’ responses to that extraordinary period had elements in common, the lessons they took from it were very different.
In the pandemic-era programs, now mostly expired or reduced, Harris and other Democrats found reinforcement of their faith in the government’s power to ameliorate hardship. If elected, she would seek to sustain or expand many of them, including subsidies for food, health care, and housing, and revive a change to the child tax credit that essentially created a guaranteed income for families with children. Those policies helped temporarily cut the poverty rate by more than half from prepandemic levels.
She backs a $15 federal minimum wage, which Republicans have fought, and is a vocal supporter of programs such as subsidized child care and paid family leave that are meant to help balance work and family.
Trump says little about his role in pandemic-era poverty programs, which many Republicans view as having been excessive and fraud-ridden. Instead, he touts his 2017 tax cuts, which he credits for boosting the economy and reducing poverty to a prepandemic low, and he has vowed to extend them when they expire next year. Most of the direct benefit from those cuts went to corporations and the wealthy.
Trump’s poverty plans are otherwise vague, but his record is one of animosity toward the programs that Harris would defend or expand. He sought to remove millions of people from Medicaid and food stamps, many of them low-wage workers. He has sought to reduce the number of people with subsidized housing and raise their rents.
While Democrats would build on pandemic policies, Republicans blame trillions in federal spending under Biden and Harris for triggering inflation and say the aid discouraged work.
There is often a difference between how candidates campaign and how they govern, and either aspirant’s power to carry out their policies will depend on who controls Congress.
Both candidates have been short on detail, and there are divisions within the parties. Senator JD Vance of Ohio, Trump’s running mate, recently suggested a large tax credit for families with children, although it is not clear whether it would be available to the poor or if it has Trump’s support.
But their records while in office provide a road map to their priorities and approaches.
Poverty was already falling when Trump won his tax cut in his first year in office, but the pace of decline more than doubled in the next two years, to 11.8 percent in 2019, then a record low, using a Census Bureau figure that includes taxes and aid. Although economists debate whether tax cuts were responsible, the episode reinforced Republican faith in them.
Still, about twice as many Americans would have been poor that year without safety-net programs for food, housing, health care, and other needs — many of which Trump sought to cut — according to an analysis of census data by the Columbia University Center on Poverty and Social Policy. “I don’t see how you can say these programs don’t make a difference,” said Christopher Wimer, the center’s director.
When pandemic aid kicked in, the poverty rate fell further, to 9.1 percent in 2020 under Trump, and to 7.8 percent in the first year of the Biden administration. That is a reduction of one-third from prepandemic levels, despite the crisis. As the aid fell, poverty rose to 12.4 percent in 2022, the last year for which there is data.
No antipoverty measure costs more, affects more people, or divides the parties as much as health care. The 2010 Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, added millions of people to Medicaid, subsidized private insurance, and cut the share of Americans who are uninsured nearly in half. Democrats regard it as a generational achievement.
Republicans say it costs the government and consumers too much and stifles innovation. They voted to repeal it dozens of times, and Trump’s high-profile effort to do so failed only narrowly. He then took action to suppress enrollment in the private plans and last year wrote, “Obamacare Sucks!”
Trump says he is no longer committed to killing the law but would make it “much better,” without saying how. The Republican Study Committee, a Trump-aligned faction of House Republicans, recently proposed cutting $4.2 trillion over 10 years from the subsidies, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, a reduction of more than half. Democrats call such plans a repeal by another name.
Harris previously supported a version of “Medicare for All,” a government-run system for everyone, but now says she would focus on strengthening the Affordable Care Act. Her campaign suggested she would preserve temporary increases in the subsidies for private plans, which led to record enrollment. The latest Biden White House budget also seeks new aid for people in the 10 states where Republicans declined to expand Medicaid.
The modern food stamp program was created a half-century ago in a bipartisan deal and has intermittently retained bipartisan support. But Republican criticism of the program grew after a large increase in the rolls during the Great Recession proved enduring.
Trump has been especially critical, arguing that the program discourages work and attracts fraud. He repeatedly sought to shrink eligibility and expand work requirements, and every budget he issued would have cut spending on it by at least 25 percent, according to a forthcoming analysis by Robert Greenstein of the Brookings Institution. Alleging abuse, Trump once warned of a “food stamp crime wave.”
Where Republicans see “welfare,” Democrats see “nutritional support.” The Supplemental Nutrition Program, as food stamps are formally known, “must not only be protected but expanded,” Harris said as a senator, while proposing a large increase in children’s benefits.
By revising nutritional standards over Republican objections, the Biden administration raised average benefits by more than one-fourth, the largest gain in the program’s history. About 1 in 8 Americans now receives a monthly benefit of about $210 a person.
Similar fights have emerged over free school meals, which were offered to all students during the pandemic. Supporters say universal meals reduce stigma, and the Biden administration changed the program’s rules to encourage more schools to provide them. Republicans see wasteful spending. At least eight states have adopted universal meals, including Minnesota, where Harris’s running mate, Governor Tim Walz, championed the change.
Biden and Harris broke new ground in their 2020 campaign with a party platform that promised housing aid “for every eligible family,” seeking to address funding shortfalls that have left only one-fourth of eligible households receiving help and wait times extending to years.
But they made little progress.
Biden and Harris included expanded housing aid for the poor in the 2021 “Build Back Better” plan, a multitrillion-dollar package of domestic initiatives. It would have renovated public housing and significantly increased the number of vouchers available to rent private apartments. Congress narrowly rejected the plan (which the conservative Heritage Foundation called the “largest welfare increase in US history”), and the administration did not return to the issue in a significant way.
Although Harris emphasized housing in a recent economic plan, she focused on homebuyers and housing production, not subsidies to poor renters. This year’s party platform trims the ambition of the promised voucher expansion to low-income veterans and people leaving foster care.
Trump pursued opposite aims. He proposed to reduce housing vouchers by 250,000, or about 10 percent, a cut about the same size as the increase the Biden-Harris team proposed. He unsuccessfully sought new work requirements and rent increases. And he undid a high-profile rule meant to reduce racial discrimination, saying it would “destroy the suburbs.” The Biden administration has worked to reinstate it but has not finalized a new rule.
On one issue, the candidates sometimes sound the same: Trump and Harris helped expand the child tax credit and both boast about it. But they support very different plans.
Trump doubled the credit in his 2017 tax cut, giving families up to $2,000 per child to defray child-rearing costs. But his measure omitted the poorest children. About one-third failed to get the full credit because their parents earned too little, and one-tenth received nothing. Republicans saw a simple principle: tax cuts aid taxpayers, not low-income people who pay little or nothing in federal income taxes.
Democrats revamped the credit during the pandemic, temporarily raising it to $3,000 per child ($3,600 for the youngest children). Most notably, the money went to all poor and middle-class children, regardless of whether parents had jobs. That turned a tax credit into a policy that the United States had never embraced: a guaranteed income for families with children, at a one-year cost of more than $100 billion. Child poverty fell by more than half from prepandemic levels as a result of the credit and other pandemic aid.
That measure expired after one year, and the Biden administration, facing unified Republican opposition, lost a fight to extend it. The credit reverted to its Trump-era form and child poverty returned to the highest level since 2018.
Harris has called the return of the broad credit a top priority and would add a $6,000 benefit for infants. In Minnesota, Walz won a state credit of $1,750 that includes all low- and moderate-income families. “This is what takes children out of poverty,” he said.
Most Republicans have called such programs welfare schemes, warning that unconditional cash aid will discourage work and marriage, leading to more poverty.
The seemingly fixed lines blurred a few weeks ago when Vance suggested in a television interview that he might back a $5,000-per-child credit. He is loosely affiliated with a conservative faction sympathetic to working-class aid, and some saw his comments as an effort to reposition the party. But Vance has not said if the poor would qualify, and queries to his campaign went unanswered.
Aid for the poor depends in part on tax policy: More revenue makes it easier to provide help; less makes it harder. The candidates diverge in profound ways.
Trump would permanently extend his 2017 tax cut, which expires next year, at a 10-year cost of roughly $4 trillion, with the benefits concentrated among corporations and the richest Americans. Republicans argue the costs can be offset by increased growth and decreased spending. But his previous tax cuts swelled deficits.
Each of his budget proposals while in office sought large Medicaid and food stamp reductions. An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal group, found he would have reduced nondefense discretionary spending to its lowest level as a share of the economy since Herbert Hoover.
The Harris campaign has said she would preserve the tax cuts for households making $400,000 or less, around 98 percent of Americans. The administration’s most recent budget, released in March, also called for about $5 trillion in new taxes on corporations and the wealthy over the next decade.
It aimed to divide the new revenue between deficit reduction and new programs, including two of Harris’s priorities: the $3,000 child tax credit that includes the poorest families, and paid family leave.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
