Extra Credit
Lawmakers could pass a child tax credit that would immediately slash child poverty. A few Senate Republicans are stonewalling it over objections about undeserving parents.
It’s Tax Day in America and a child tax credit bill that would help 16 million children is “on life support,” despite already passing the House, after Republican senators raised concerns about how the bill would benefit the country’s poorest families.
Specifically, those senators are worried about giving too much to poor families they deem undeserving.
An expanded child tax credit is part of a $78 billion tax bill that passed the House by an overwhelming 357-70 vote in January. (For its Republican support, the bill can thank its generous package of business tax breaks.) But even with its broad bipartisan popularity, the bill is stuck in the Senate, with key Republicans objecting to a provision that would allow families to collect child tax credits based on their previous year’s earnings, even if their income had subsequently fallen.
For families in need, this “look-back” provision allows them to collect money for their children, even if a parent has lost their job or cut back on paid hours. But Republican holdouts like Sen. Mike Crapo have suggested the look-back policy would incentivize parents against working.
Crapo, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, has argued that the look-back provision would “undermine the work requirement and represent a significant shift [...] to transform the CTC from primarily working family tax relief into a government subsidy.”
Let’s skim over the fact that many parents, especially solo parents, are not always able to find high-paying, parent-friendly jobs at the drop of a hat, and that Crapo’s argument is a particularly transparent case of pitting low- and middle-class families against each other in a scramble for modest public support.
The fact is that, yes, low-income families do need government subsidies. Under the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, families became eligible for annual tax refunds of $3,600 for each child under six, and $3,000 for children ages six-17. The effect was one of the country’s most immediate breakthroughs in child welfare. Thanks to monthly payouts, child poverty dropped 46 percent—from 9.7 percent to 5.2 percent.
But the program only lasted a year. Facing objections from Republicans, and from crypto-Republican Sen. Joe Manchin, who reportedly claimed parents would spend the tax credit on drugs, lawmakers allowed the groundbreaking anti-poverty measure to expire in 2022. When it did, child poverty skyrocketed to 12.4 percent, the largest known one-year increase in U.S. history.
The current child tax credit bill does not go as far as its predecessor in aiding poor families. But analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that, if passed, the credit would reach approximately 16 million children in low-income households, pulling up to 400,000 children above the poverty line in its first year, with more to follow.
“A single parent with two children who earns $13,000 working part time as a home health aide would see their credit double (a $1,575 gain) in the first year,” the analysis finds.
This single parent is probably not holding a part-time job out of laziness, as Crapo’s comments imply, but because their childcare requirements limit the hours in which they can work. With an expanded child tax credit, this low-income family would get a (let’s be honest, pretty small) financial break, rather than be penalized for having a parent trying to juggle the dual role of breadwinner and solo caretaker.
Of course, Democratic Senators have argued that Crapo’s objections are basically bullshit. Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (Crapo’s Democratic counterpart) offered last month to appease Crapo by omitting the look-back provision altogether.
“The number-one concern I’ve heard from Republicans is the child tax credit lookback policy,” Wyden said in a statement last month. “While I think the policy is important, I’ve offered to take it out of the bill if it gets this over the finish line. Working with groups, we have found a way to do this and still lift the same number of kids out of poverty. As of this morning, my offer on the lookback is still on the table.”
Republicans could bail out low-income families, even on their aggressively means-tested terms. Their current stonewalling suggests they just don’t want to.
Hey friends. I’m back from some travels, locked in, and logged on. I am trying very hard to ignore the week’s Twitter debate over whether children should be welcomed in public. While I side-eye some of the worst takes I’ve read in a while, here are some other stories I’m following:
-The New York City Council is begging Mayor Eric Adams to walk back some of his administration’s colossal education cuts, which include a $170 million markdown on funding for early childhood education. Those cuts could imperil the city’s relatively new 3-K and pre-K programs, which have promised a lifeline to families in a city with expensive childcare. For approximately 80 percent of New York City families, childcare is unaffordable, Gothamist reports.
-But New York City police still have a massive budget, and they’re using it to… issue fines to a mom who let her four-year-old take an emergency (shielded!) pee next to a closed restroom at a public park. “Five or six parks officers” reportedly approached the mother and her child, who has a sensory processing issue that sometimes affects his ability to predict his bathroom needs until the last minute. As a fellow mom with a four-year-old who sometimes needs to find a bathroom in a city with few public bathrooms, solidarity with this woman!!
-A former Oklahoma school superintendent is speaking out about the impossibility of working with the state’s culture-warrior education chief Ryan Walters. Pamela Smith-Gordon, a conservative who had supported Walters, became a leader in Walters’ administration, only to find him unreachable by colleagues, AWOL on financial concerns, a bully toward public school leaders, and apparently more interested in media appearances than in Oklahoma schools.
-Let’s exit on this profile of William Claude Jones, the pedophile and serial runaway father who presided over the passage of an 1864 Arizona law that is now threatening abortion rights in the state. He abandoned his first wife to marry a 12-year-old (whom he allegedly “abducted”), whom he left to marry a 15-year-old, whom he left to marry a 14-year-old, whom he left for another woman (age unknown). The laws he helped pass may dictate whether Arizonans can opt out of pregnancy, or whether children the ages of Jones’ wives will be forced into parenthood.
Thanks for reading MomLeft! This is a reader-supported publication, so if you liked this installment, feel free to subscribe or pass it along to a friend! I’ll be back later this week with an interview with Jessica Calarco, author of the forthcoming book “Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net.”