For lower-income and middle-income households, the combination of policies in the Democrats’ legislation could yield significant short-term increases in income. While unemployment benefits have an application process and eligibility restrictions, direct payments and the child tax credit expansion would have no strings attached, and they are available even to households with no income.

The bottom 20% of households by income would see their after-tax incomes rise by 20% because of the plan’s direct payments and tax credit expansions, according to the Tax Policy Center, a project of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution. That group would get an average benefit of $2,810, while the middle 20% of households would get an average of $3,360, or 5.5% of after-tax income.

Higher-income households would get smaller amounts, and for now, Democrats are waiting before advancing the tax increases on top earners they promised during last year’s campaign.

These pieces of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion plan would be temporary—one-time payments, one year of tax credit expansions and unemployment benefits through Aug. 29. But Democrats are already talking about turning some of them into permanent pieces of the federal financial support network to households.

The child tax credit expansion, in particular, has deep support as a no-strings-attached way to combat child poverty. Lawmakers are also pursuing a policy to automatically adjust unemployment insurance to economic conditions rather than setting end dates.

Democratic leaders haven’t, however, backed anything as expansive as a universal basic income or suggested repealing existing programs. And they have resisted extending the benefits to the upper middle class.

The one-year child tax credit expansion, costing nearly $110 billion, would approximately double the size of that program. The $8 billion in additional tax breaks for child care would more than double the cost of the existing program, and the $12 billion temporary expansion of the earned-income tax credit for childless workers would increase that break by more than 10%. The direct payments would be $422 billion, slightly less than the combined $458 billion approved last March and December.

Antipoverty programs globally tend to be more durable when they are more universal, because aid to the poor carries a stigma that undermines political support for the programs, said Monica Prasad, a sociologist at Northwestern University.

“If you try to target your policies to the poor, you end up not really helping the poor,” she said.

In the emerging Democratic view, the flexibility, simplicity and popularity of cash aid are overcoming concerns about narrowing programs’ scope to direct money to those in need.

“This is how you benefit Main Street business—you give Americans money to pay their bills, to shop and live,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D., Ore.) during a meeting Wednesday of the House Ways and Means Committee, which writes tax legislation.

Republicans warned that people would get more money staying at home than working, and that the generous aid could slow the economic recovery.