The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
$3K-per-child tax credit included in relief bill
WASHINGTON — Democrats plan to include an at least $3,000per-child tax credit, paid to American families monthly in 2021, in the coronavirus relief bill that is hurtling toward passage by Congress.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, has been pushing to expand the child tax credit for 20 years in Congress and now as chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, she helped secure this temporary increase — and is leading the fight to make it permanent.
Aimed at fighting child poverty during the pandemic, the proposal in the coronavirus bill would raise the child tax credit to $3,600 for families with children up to six years old and pay $3,000 per child up to age 17 for couples earning up to $150,000 or individuals up to $75,000. The credit would decrease in size for higher income earners until it is phased out.
The child tax credit is normally $2,000. It’s not fully accessible to low-income people who do not pay taxes. But using lessons learned from distributed stimulus checks to non-taxpayers, Democrats now plan to pay the new enhanced tax credit to non-tax filers.
Over one in three children do not qualify for the tax credit because their parents earn too little, according to the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University. In Connecticut, 26 percent of all children do not qualify, a DeLauro aide said.
Also, unlike the lump sum refund, parents will get this tax credit paid in monthly installments of $300 for parents of young children or $250 for older children.
Increasing the child tax credit during the pandemic has bipartisan support. But not everyone favors doing so permanently like DeLauro.
“In the current pandemic relief bill under consideration, we would support increasing the Child Tax Credit to $3,500, and $4,500 for young children,” said Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida. “However, we do not support turning the Child Tax Credit into what has been called a ‘child allowance,’ paid out as a universal basic income to all parents. That is not tax relief for working parents; it is welfare assistance.”
DeLauro, who’s been pushing to reform the child tax credit since 2003, made clear Monday that she believes a temporary expansion should be the stepping stone to permanent change. She’s pushing the Biden administration on that point and brought up the child tax credit in a Oval Office meeting with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday.
“We build the architecture for the future ... so we’re not just throwing money at a situation but we are looking at enduring transformation change,” DeLauro said.
DeLauro’s permanent expansion would offer the credit to more families of higher income levels: up to $150,000 per year for individuals and $200,000 per year for couples.
The non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimates it will cost $117 billion to expand the child tax credit per year.
But Democrats like Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., and Ritchie Neal, D-N.Y., argued the investment would have significant returns by cutting poverty. They cited estimates that their bill could cut child poverty by nearly 45 percent, cut Black child poverty by 52.4 percent, Hispanic child poverty by 45.4 percent and Native American child poverty by 61.5 percent.
Increasing the child tax credit generally has some bipartisan support and proposals to expand it now have been offered by Democrats and Republicans. In their tax reform bill in 2017, Republicans doubled the maximum child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, recently released a proposal to give parents a $350 per month benefit for young children and $250 a month for school-aged children, while eliminating other federal tax benefits for families, like head-of-household status and the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program. He would also get rid of the state and local tax deduction completely to pay for his proposal, an idea sure to have opposition from high tax blue states like Connecticut.
DeLauro said she welcomes ideas to the table but opposed his decision to cut other programs helping low-income families, suggesting this change would mean Romney’s proposal would not cut poverty as much as as her own proposal.
Romney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Other Democratic proposals to reform the child tax credit have also been proposed.