The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
$3,000-per-child tax credit included in COVID relief bill
WASHINGTON — Democrats plan to include an at least $3,000-per-child tax credit, paid to American families in monthly installments 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 lowincome 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, RUtah, 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 headof-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.
Northern Correctional Institution, the state’s controversial “supermax” prison located in Somers, will close by July 1, the Department of Correction announced to its staff on Monday.
The closure is the first since Enfield Correctional Institution was shuttered on Jan. 23, 2018. There are 5,000 fewer people in state correctional facilities since then. The most precipitous decline has been since the onset of the pandemic; there are 3,377 fewer people in prison or jail today than on March 1.
“I have been transparent about my intentions to close facilities, ever since [Gov. Ned] Lamont announced that I was his choice to be the next commissioner,” Commissioner Designate Angel Quiros told DOC employees in a memo Monday. “The decision to close Northern can be largely attributed to the significant drop in the incarcerated population, as well as my obligation to the taxpayers of Connecticut to identify cost savings measures. The operational costs associated with Northern Correctional exceed most other locations, and the overall census has not surpassed one hundred inmates in the last six months.”
Closing the Somers prison will save the state approximately $12.6 million in annual operating costs.
“New prison admissions in Connecticut have declined significantly over the last decade, and the incarcerated population is currently at a 32-year low. This is even as violent, high-risk inmates are serving more of their original sentences than ever before,” Lamont said in a statement. “Spending millions of dollars annually to operate facilities for a population that continues to get smaller and smaller is not a good use of resources, especially as we work to reduce the cost structure of state government.
Northern was opened in 1995, when the state’s prison population was much greater and officials were having a hard time managing behavioral infractions occurring throughout the prison system.
Advocates have called for its closure for years, citing its declining population and status as a relic of a bygone tough-oncrime era. There were only 55 people incarcerated at Northern as of Feb. 1, 40 of whom were Black and 11 of whom were Hispanic. The facility was built to hold at least 500 prisoners.
“Northern is a monument to cruelty and systemic racism. In sum, it is a symbol of everything that is wrong with incarceration,” said David McGuire, executive director of the ACLU of Connecticut. “It is critical that the state close Northern in a way that ensures it will never be opened again, and that the money saved from its closure goes toward programs and services to help people most harmed by mass incarceration.”
Northern was the subject of a lawsuit filed last week aimed at preventing prisoners with mental illnesses from being sent there. The lawsuit alleges inmates with mental illnesses were shackled and isolated in cold concrete cells, forced to eat food off the floor, for exhibiting behavior consistent with psychiatric symptoms — symptoms exacerbated by the loneliness and isolation that is a function of life at Northern. One man was given a disciplinary ticket for attempting to commit suicide. Another violated DOC policy by putting his hand through the trap of his cell door, desperate for human interaction.
In a previous interview, Quiros, who served as warden at Northern from 2009 to 2011, said the prison had “served its purpose. With the criminal justice reform that’s going on, the agency will have to take a look at what additional changes we need to make, as far as the programs that are housed at Northern, and then we’re still keeping staff safety, and offender safety, in mind.”
Quiros said during his confirmation hearing that he anticipated closing two correctional facilities due to declining prison and jail populations during the pandemic. Northern is the first; he said that the only facilities not on the table for closure were the city jails — located in Hartford, Bridgeport and New Haven — and York Correctional Institution, the state’s sole prison for women.
Approximately 175 corrections staff work at Northern. They will not be laid off as a result of the closure. The DOC will work with the employees and their unions to send them to other correctional facilities, helping reduce overtime expenses and mitigate the need to hire new staff to take the place of retirees.
At least one corrections union was displeased with the news. AFSCME Local 391 President Collin Provost said in a statement that, “Front-line corrections staff are concerned that closing state prisons will prove to be penny-wise and pound-foolish. Shoehorning inmates into other facilities will undermine safety and security in the prisons and create more difficult conditions for offenders and staff. We’re concerned that closing Northern will cause overcrowding, lead to more positives test results and limit the Agency’s ability to quarantine. The State and the DOC should think about repurposing Northern instead of shuttering it.”
In his internal memo, Quiros pledged that the “challenging populations” at Northern will be safely transferred to other correctional facilities.
“These populations have been managed at other locations in years past, and I am confident we can do so now,” Quiros told DOC employees. “As always, safety and security will remain a top priority as we navigate through this process.”