Hole in the Net

What good is a social safety net if the people who need help the most can’t access it?

- By Emma Pattee and Stefanie O'Connell Rodriguez. Photographs by Newsweek, Pict Riders, Getty, Heidi Gutman, ABC, Patrick T. Fallon and AFP

THE PANDEMIC HAS SHONE A BRIGHT LIGHT on our country’s social safety net. Record numbers of Americans applied for unemployment. The federal government issued hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus checks. Federal and state programs like the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), mortgage relief, rental assistance, even free vaccine delivery—all of which had trouble gaining bipartisan support in previous years— were quickly implemented as the crisis unfolded and millions of Americans lost jobs, fell ill or were sidelined at home caring for children whose schools and day care facilities were closed due to COVID.

Now, most of those benefits have ended or will soon: Over the summer, Americans lost federal protection from evictions and foreclosures. In September, pandemic unemployment insurance supplements expired nationwide, the expanded child tax credit followed suit at the end of the year and federal student loan payments, paused since March 2020, will resume in May. Even with those benefits expiring, though, it seems that COVID-19 taught us a valuable lesson about how seriously we need to take our social safety net. The Biden administration’s embattled $1.75 trillion Build Back Better plan, would lay the groundwork for a stronger and more inclusive safety net with provisions to reduce the cost of child and health care, revive the expanded child tax credit and bolster state pre-K programs as well as help combat climate change.

Though the fate of the bill is unclear, there is no doubt that the debate over its provisions, combined with the programs created to cope with the pandemic, have revived the conversation around the importance of supporting our most vulnerable citizens in times of crisis. They’ve also highlighted a serious problem with the social safety net that far fewer people talk about: Many Americans can’t access the benefits they’re already eligible for.