Members of the House Democratic caucus revealed proposed language for a year-end spending package that includes an extension of the expanded child tax credit included in the 2021 American Rescue Plan.
This new proposal to expand COVID-era child tax credits could provide parents up to $3,600 per year to help support their families.
The new proposal, if enacted, proposes increasing the $2,000 maximum benefit included in the current credit to as much as $3,600 per year for children under six years of age, closely in line with the credit Congress allowed to expire last December that, according to estimates from Columbia University, lifted approximately one-sixth of all previously poor children above the poverty line.
“We spent a lot of time working on federal programs, looking at what they are and what their consequences are,” the House Appropriations Committee’s Democratic chairwoman, Rosa DeLauro, said in a press conference announcing the proposal Thursday. “I don’t believe we’ve seen another federal program that has met its goal and purpose in such a short period of time. It has made the difference we thought it would make when it was introduced.”
To DeLauro and millions of Americans, the expanded tax credit was the difference of whether someone “could pay their light bill that month, fill their gas tanks, pay for childcare,” resulting in double-digit percentages of reductions in poverty across numerous ethnic groups.
And though some, like Republican Senator Mitt Romney, had worked to reintroduce the credit into ensuing spending packages, those efforts have failed to gain the support of critical figures like West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, who has opposed expanding the credit in the past.
Time for Democrats is likely running short. While they will continue to boast a majority in the upper chamber of Congress in January, Republicans will soon be in control of the House, creating a stalemate between the two rooms.
“Something insane would have to happen for there to be no work requirement,” one person involved in the talks told Politico earlier this month.
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