Leonard Witt: What to do with your $1,400 Biden check

To The Daily Sun,

Thanks to Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan low and middle income residents across Belknap and Carroll counties will, like Americans everywhere, soon be receiving checks for $1,400. When those checks arrive, they will be a lifesaver for so many families on the edge. In Tamworth, for example, the local public nurse recently requested diaper donations for families who could not afford them.

For folks with higher incomes it will be discretionary money, hopefully, used to support local businesses, restaurants, craftspeople, farmers, charities, food shelves and the arts to jump start the regional economy.

The long-term game changer for more than 90 percent of families with children will be the monthly $300 checks for each child. Biden estimates the rescue plan’s various provisions will cut the child poverty rate in half. The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count Data Center reports that, pre-COVID, there were almost 1,500 youth in Belknap County living in poverty and 1,200 in Carroll County. So, half of that means that more than 1,300 of our local kids will no longer be living in poverty and no longer suffering its negative consequences. Unlike the earlier bailouts, this one is geared to everyday people and children, not billionaires, banks and mega corporations.

Another provision will help states, including New Hampshire, increase vaccination rates and improve rural and urban healthcare. Unemployment checks will be extended, rent subsidies continued, food stamps increased, childcare improved, schools better equipped, pension funds secured, student debt relieved and health insurance made more affordable for the middle class and self-employed.

This infusion of cash and jobs in addition to ensuring that children are adequately fed, housed and educated will allow their parents, and all adults, to regain their sense of pride. Thanks to Joe Biden, the Democratic majority Senate and House and all the people who supported them, a new, more loving, more prosperous era has arrived in America.

Leonard Witt

Sandwich