Take the Great Recession, the economic plunge that followed the 2008 financial crisis. It cost those in the poorest 10 percent of Americans more than 20 percent of their incomes, which was more than twice the drop experienced by the richest 10 percent. It was black and Hispanic workers, as well as workers who didn’t have a college degree, who saw higher rates of unemployment and longer durations without a job than other workers.

Overall, the recession exacerbated already existing inequalities in wealth and income, with black and Hispanic families, as well as women, falling further behind their white, male counterparts in terms of asset building.

And the next recession could be even harder.

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It’s not because that next recession, whenever it arrives, will reach the depth and breadth of the Great Recession. Rather, it’s because federal and state governments have been undermining the programs that protect people when an economic downturn arrives, such as unemployment benefits or nutrition assistance, essentially since the Great Recession ended. This means those programs will be even less effective when they’re next called into action, making the next recession more painful than it would be otherwise.

These concerns are even more important now that there are some flashing red signs that a recession may come sooner than anyone would hope.

To start, nine states have cut the duration of their unemployment benefits systems to below the previously standard 26 weeks, with Florida cutting all the way down to 12. During the recession, when the average length of unemployment approached 40 weeks, more conscientious states extended benefits up to 99 weeks.

While five of the states that have cut unemployment benefits have rules in place to automatically expand benefits if the unemployment rate rises, the other four don’t. And since the conservatives who now control the Senate were against those Great Recession benefits expansions, there’s no guarantee of federal help if states do not act to fix their stingy systems.

Also, having a workable benefits system in place doesn’t necessarily ensure people get the help they need. In 2007, 35 percent of unemployed workers received benefits. Today, barely more than a quarter do due to the imposition of more stringent eligibility requirements. In some states it’s substantially worse: In 2017, for instance, just 10 percent of unemployed workers in North Carolina qualified.

So the main bulwark against poverty when mass unemployment occurs has been whittled down from a standard that even before the recent cuts left America among the least generous countries in the world.

Then there’s nutrition assistance. During the recession, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provided help to nearly 50 million people per month at its peak in December 2012. But the Trump administration — after trying and failing to convince Congress to cut the program — has unilaterally imposed new limits that are going to make it so the program reaches fewer people in the future.

One change, in particular, makes it harder for states to waive certain requirements during periods of high unemployment, which is exactly the time at which eligibility should be expanding.

The Trump administration is also providing waivers to states so that they can add work requirements to Medicaid – to date, six states have had their waivers approved. So when workers lose their jobs, and thus their employer-based health insurance, Medicaid will be that much harder to turn to.

Other steps state governments have taken will also make recession response harder. One of the fundamental problems during an economic downturn is that most states have balanced budget requirements, meaning they have to cut their budgets and suck money out of the economy at the precise moment households are doing the same thing, creating a vicious cycle of economic contraction. Education is a particular favorite for reductions; 12 states still aren’t spending as much on their education system today as they were before the Great Recession.

To deal with that reality, states have rainy day funds they are meant to deploy during rough times to counteract some of that budget slashing. However, about a third of states don’t have the money available in their funds to get through even a moderate downturn. Some of those states, such as Kentucky and Missouri, decided to lower tax rates for their wealthiest earners this year, which didn’t really help bolster those reserves.

Come an economic downturn, the federal government could step in to fill the void states create, just as it did during the Great Recession, providing aid so that states don’t have to, for instance, lay off as many teachers as they would otherwise. But there’s not much reason to believe conservatives in the U.S. Senate would be for that, either. So, an economic problem is going to collide with a political one, creating more pain for more people. (It doesn’t help that Republicans in Congress used $1.5 trillion on a tax cut for the rich and big corporations that had little economic effect, and will embolden those who think additional spending is impossible due to federal deficits and debt.)

Of course, there’s no divining whether a recession is imminent. It may be that the warning signs this time are just a false alarm. But another recession is going to come eventually. And when it does, it’s going to be more painful than necessary, not due to any innate economic condition, but because of choices policymakers made.

Severe economic pain was widespread—more than 10 million people were unemployed, up from 7 million before the crisis.  No one was hit harder than communities of color, where residents who should have qualified for prime loans had been targeted and steered toward higher-priced exotic subprimes, then lost their homes to foreclosure. As reporter Jamelle Bouie put it, the loss of wealth represented “a generation’s worth of hard work and progress wiped out.”

This was the economy our nation’s first African-American president inherited.

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Barack Obama’s work to respond to hardship and deprivation began before he even took the oath of office, when he ordered his transition team to develop what would become the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act).  He signed the bill into law in February 2009.

The Recovery Act was one of the most powerful pieces of antipoverty legislation passed in decades. It extended tax credits to more people who worked in low-paying jobs—a reform that eventually became permanent, and helped lift nearly 10 million people out of poverty last year alone. It prevented more than a million home foreclosures, saved or created up to 3.6 million jobs, and helped families and communities survive the economic havoc that had been unleashed by a reckless Wall Street.

Princeton economist Alan Blinder and Moody’s Chief Economist Mark Zandi estimate that without the Recovery Act we might have faced a depression, with 17 million lost jobs (instead of about 8 million), and a peak unemployment rate high of nearly 16 percent (instead of 10 percent).  The Recovery Act’s expansion of the safety net also kept more than 6 million Americans out of poverty.

Immediately following passage of the Recovery Act, the President began work on healthcare reform, eventually signing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) into law in March 2010. The legislation established historic economic protections. Gone is the ability of insurance companies to reject people for coverage on the basis of pre-existing conditions.  Gone was the chance that Americans would be too poor to afford insurance, but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid (until the Supreme Court got involved).  And gone is the chance that young adults would be cut off from their parents’ plans.

More than 22 million Americans have gotten health insurance through Obamacare, and the share of Americans without health insurance has dropped to a record low.  The law also protects millions of low- and moderate-income families who would otherwise be a single health crisis away from poverty.  Vice President Joe Biden described the significance of the legislation perfectly when he said, “This is a big f—ing deal.”

Once the Affordable Care Act was in place, Obama began working with Congress to tackle some of the root causes of the Great Recession—including the actions of “too big to fail” financial institutions. The Dodd-Frank financial reform law established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to protect consumers from unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices, and to take action against companies that break the law.

Throughout his term, President Obama worked tirelessly to make sure Americans have a fair chance at success. He launched the Promise Neighborhood and Promise Zones initiatives to improve economic opportunity in high-poverty communities—whether urban, rural, or tribal.  He signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which makes it easier for women to file an equal pay lawsuit. He issued Executive Orders to raise wages for federal government contractors, updated a meek Overtime Rule in order to raise working-class wages, took executive action to help ensure that people aren’t held back by a criminal record, and created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to protect undocumented children and young adults from deportation.

The president also drew attention to issues that have been neglected for far too long, ranging from criminal justice reform, longstanding federal policy failures on American Indian and Alaskan Native issues, and science-based nutrition standards for school meals.  And he accomplished all of this while most Republicans in Congress refused to cooperate on virtually any of his proposals—a tactic stated explicitly by Senator Mitch McConnell, among others.

To be sure, the legacy is not all positive and the work is not complete. The economic recovery following the Great Recession was extraordinarily slow and painful for far too many of us—and many people haven’t recovered at all. He could have prevented more foreclosures by forcing banks to modify mortgages.  DACA and the Overtime rule were blocked by the courts, food and nutrition assistance programs were cut nearly as quickly as they were expanded, and revenues were never increased sufficiently to meet the nation’s long-term antipoverty and infrastructure needs.

That said, President Obama’s legacy is one that demonstrates a tireless commitment to making the American Dream accessible to all Americans.

As we now approach the swearing-in of President-elect Donald Trump, just about everything we have alluded to here, and much more, is in jeopardy.

That’s why in the coming weeks, TalkPoverty’s series examining Obama’s legacy will focus not only on poverty and inequality, but on what’s at risk under a Trump administration. It will address how we can protect—and eventually expand—the gains we have made over the past eight years.

No one will be more vulnerable to the changes proposed by Trump and his Republican allies than people who are already struggling. We need to be ready to fight as if lives are at stake—because they are. 

Editor’s note: TalkPoverty presents this series in collaboration with the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality.

Earlier this month, the Senate Banking Committee, on which I serve as Ranking Member, held a hearing on the economic recovery, and I was proud to see ordinary Americans outnumbering lobbyists in the audience. Instead of expensive tailored suits, they wore T-shirts with a simple but powerful message: “Whose Recovery?”

That’s a question we must keep asking ourselves.

If we are serious about helping working families and reducing the persistent poverty holding too many Americans back, we need to get serious about expanding and strengthening one of the most effective poverty-fighting tools we have: the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

The EITC was created with broad bipartisan support in 1975, and it has been expanded by every president since. It encourages people to work by putting thousands of dollars back into the pockets of low-wage and moderate-wage workers. Last year, 27 million American households—950,000 households in my home state of Ohio alone—claimed the EITC and earned an average refund of $2,400. That means millions of families getting a check in the mail this spring—a check making their hard work pay so they can make a down payment on a new car, put a deposit on an apartment, pay off medical debt, or save for a rainy day.

Each year, the EITC protects more children from poverty than any other government program. What’s more, research shows that it is an investment that pays long-term dividends, improving children’s health, educational attainment, and even earnings in adulthood.

One of our most important accomplishments last year was the bipartisan tax package that permanently expanded the EITC, providing certainty for the millions of families who rely on the credit and are counting on it again this year. But there is one glaring hole in the program that we still need to fix.

Under current law, workers without children barely earn any EITC. And childless workers under age 25 don’t qualify for the credit at all.

We are talking about people working full-time, 40 hours a week, all year round. But at minimum wage or even $9 per hour, they earn less than $20,000 a year. And without a significant EITC, these workers can actually be taxed deeper into poverty.

That is shameful. It goes against our core values as a nation, and it has to end.

These people work hard and play by the rules. They contribute by paying Social Security and other payroll taxes. How will they save for the future and plan for their families if they constantly struggle to get by, paycheck to paycheck—all the while being taxed deeper into poverty?

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In the final budget of his presidency, President Obama has proposed expanding the EITC by reducing the eligibility age from 25 to 21 and nearly doubling the maximum value of the credit.

This is a step in the right direction, but it does not go far enough.

The Working Families Tax Relief Act, which I introduced last year, would nearly triple the maximum value of the EITC to ensure that no one is taxed into poverty. Just expanding the childless EITC as that legislation would do, would lift more than half a million people out of poverty and reduce poverty for an additional 10 million Americans.

We must also combine the tax credit with an increase in the minimum wage, to make sure a hard day’s work is rewarded with an honest day’s pay.

Expanding the EITC will mean more people attending college and getting GEDs. It will mean more Americans working at higher salaries. And it will enable millions of people to earn their way out of debt or to begin saving a nest egg, potentially for the first time in their lives.

And that means stronger communities, and more stable families.

If we are serious about creating an economic recovery for all Americans—not just those who work on Wall Street or in Washington—we need to let working people keep more of their hard-earned money. Then when we are asked the question, “Whose recovery?” we will be closer to answering: “All hardworking Americans.”