The Child Tax Credit
Hello, I hope that the holiday season is going great!
The Child Tax Credit has been in the news this week, for excellent reason. If there’s one thing that everyone agrees on as a public policy triumph from the past year it has been the enhanced Child Tax Credit. It’s lifted 3.8 million children out of poverty and improved the lives of 62 million Americans directly, not counting the millions more who work at day care centers, groceries and small businesses who have benefited from the buying power in the hands of families. You might be one of these families.
I’m incredibly proud of the role that Humanity Forward played in both the relief checks and the child tax credit – I personally lobbied more than 60 members of Congress in 2020 and our organization spent millions helping to make the case.
I had hoped that Congress – with the backing of 448 economists – would make the Child Tax Credit permanent. But I was pleased that at a minimum it was extended for a year in the approved Build Back Better bill, particularly because I figured it would be very difficult to discontinue after that period.
Now, the package is stalling in the Senate, and if the bill isn’t approved by December 28th, it is likely that the January child tax credit will be delayed or missed. This is upsetting – imagine tens of millions of families around the country of relatively modest means not getting support that they have benefited from and relied upon for months.
If you keep up with the goings-on in Washington D.C,, there is one key person in whether this bill passes, when and in what form – West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin.
Joe has a different set of political considerations than most any other Democrat. Trump won his state by 39 points. While West Virginia has the 6th highest poverty rate in the country, the politics are complicated. There is a lot of value to Joe in having a point-of-view distinct from the Democratic Party. Joe has openly talked about leaving the party if he’s not wanted, and the fact is that the (D) next to his name may not be a major boost for him electorally. It’s also one big reason why you don’t see many attacks on Joe Manchin from other Democrats – they know they’re fortunate to have a Democratic Senator at all from West Virginia.
It’s also true that Democrats were lucky to have even 50 senators – they came within 15,000 Georgia voters of having only 49 and Mitch McConnell as speaker.
Even when Washington D.C. does something wonderful that improves millions of lives, it runs aground of institutional dysfunction.
How do I mean? The Child Tax Credit right now is a victim of polarization. It is built into a larger Democratic package that no Republican will vote for. If it were a separate bill, a number of Republican Senators would vote for it – the approval rating of the enhanced Child Tax Credit is over 70% in some polls including a majority of Republicans, and Mitt Romney in particular has championed a version of it.
In a more rational system, a handful of Republicans would make common cause with Democrats and renew the Child Tax Credit to ensure no missed payment while the other parts of the bill get hashed out. But that’s not the system that we have. We have a two-party system that is so divided that any kind of cross-party collaboration is nearly unthinkable.
It’s an infuriating shame. Millions of children lifted out of poverty in a way that’s widely popular, and our country’s dysfunction is so deep that it may not last. Can you imagine being a part of a body of leaders that could make such a profound difference for so many families and not taking action? Politics is overriding all else. Millions of families around the country may not know why they don’t get a check in 4 weeks. But they’ll miss it. We all will, just as we miss being a country that does the right thing for its people regardless of party or partisan politics.
Right now is the perfect time to contribute to the Forward Party to fix our broken politics – donate $5 today to let people know that we can do better than this. Happy Holidays!
