If every fifth child in Germany lives in poverty, half of them in households with working parents, any government that wants to change this is immune to criticism.
The traffic light coalition also booked this project as repairing the omissions that the grand coalition was responsible for.
However, she was not idle.
What the coalition is planning now, a little more of everything, but above all for families with no or low incomes, that was also the guideline of its black-red predecessor.
In fact, however, it was a failure not to make a clear, easily accessible and unbureaucratic way out of the undergrowth of many families, schoolchildren and children.
Anyone who wants to clarify applications, use hotlines or ask questions knows that queues can take months.
As a result, many families give up or give up even though they urgently need the money.
Do not see children as a risk of poverty
Wanting to change something about this is a motive of basic child security that can only be welcomed.
Those who have children should not have to perceive them as a risk of poverty, certainly not for bureaucratic reasons.
The traffic light coalition does not leave it at that.
Every social service that they (and the grand coalition) have launched has overshot the mark by far.
In this case, the coalition boasts that the child benefit and the new additional amount will be expanded by a double-digit billion amount.
This is happening at a time when the coalition and the prime ministers do not yet know how to finance all-day care and where the staff for daycare centers, schools and authorities should come from.
A smart redistribution would not have left the coalition embarrassed to spend even more money it doesn't have.
But Berlin does it like the countries in which daycare fees were abolished: social policy as an ATM that replaces the courage to focus.