The United States has one of the highest rates of childhood poverty in the developed world. More than 11 million American children lived in poverty in 2019, a figure that’s expected to grow once data on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic becomes available. In the past week, two plans have emerged in Washington that take widely different approaches to achieving the same goal: combating child poverty by sending parents money every month.

Senate Democrats this week unveiled a proposal to provide parents with monthly payments totaling up to $3,600 over the course of the next year as part of the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill currently making its way through Congress. The plan would increase the size of the current child tax credit and send the money monthly rather than in an annual lump sum, so the parent of a child under 6 would receive $300 per month — parents of older children would receive slightly less. The proposal would also eliminate rules that prevent as many as 27 million of the poorest families from receiving the full value of the existing benefit. At the moment, the proposed program would expire in 2021, but Democrats reportedly intend to make it permanent once it’s in place.