We note on this page that the feared recession never materialized this year, that despite inflationary pressures, costs have not risen as dramatically as they could have, and that employment numbers remain strong. We have celebrated the fact that wages are also rising. That's a much better economics than the predictions of the people whose job it is to predict these things.
But we have a responsibility to remember the depth of the challenges facing New Yorkers who are most in need. Especially as we face a different economic reality: the end of a broad federal safety net that was a short-term emergency. .
Now, months or even a year after the end of this experiment, we are seeing dire consequences, including a growing number of New Yorkers facing food insecurity. A report released last week by State Auditor Tom DiNapoli found that one in nine New York households could not afford to buy enough food at some point between 2020 and 2022. It noted that participation in SNAP food benefits is on the rise even as the employment recovery strengthens. Additional SNAP benefits expired last March.
Part of this is due to the fact that much of the city's job growth is occurring in low-wage sectors such as home health care, combined with persistently high rents and rising costs of living due to major expenses such as childcare. Involved. There are some long-term institutional fixes that need to be addressed at all levels, such as building and preserving more affordable housing, but there are also relatively simple fixes that we've tried and found work. there is.
This includes expanding the federal child tax credit, which clearly and dramatically reduced child poverty before being allowed to expire at the end of 2021. Other than similar tired gnashing of teeth, I have yet to hear anything resembling a rational argument against expansion. Regarding gifts and welfare benefits.
We are now at a moment when birth rates are plummeting, but it's not simply because young people these days don't want to have children, as some commentators claim. The cost of raising a child is astronomical, and more government support should be considered a given.
The bill is so popular that it has rare bipartisan support in Congress. It seems like I'm doomed nowLike so many things in a dysfunctional government, it's down to a few recalcitrant lawmakers getting in the way of popular policies.
Some Republican senators who support expansion in principle would rather do so because it is combined with regressive tax policy, but now they would instead support expansion again next year because that's politics. He seems to be thinking that. They have no skin on their backs. Whether it happens now or in 2025 is all the same for elected officials who earn comfortable salaries for six-year terms. But it's not the same for families struggling to make ends meet. For them, a one-year gap in implementation of assistance programs can deplete their savings and lead to fear of losing their home and other long-term consequences.
It is unconscionable that people go hungry in the richest society in human history. Our economy is strong, but that doesn't mean we should leave people by the wayside, it's a stronger reason to help them. Their fate is closer to ours than we think.
