Background: “With One Move, Congress Could Lift Millions Of Children Out Of Poverty” – NPR (2021)
CCSE articles on the CTC:
Op-ed: The case for renewing the expanded child tax credit – Richmond Times-Dispatch
These 15 GOP-led states are rejecting summer food aid for children – Hill
There’s nothing pro-child about the GOP’s resistance to food aid – Catherine Rampell/WaPost
“For a quarter-century, Congress had a bipartisan consensus that it would fully fund the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, known as WIC, which provides food assistance to low-income families determined to be at nutritional risk. ‘Full funding’ means that the program has had enough money to prevent any eligible applicant from being turned away.
“That consensus fell apart last year, when Republican lawmakers crafted a bill that would have eliminated or reduced benefits for 5.3 million kids and pregnant, postpartum and breastfeeding adults. Thankfully, that bill didn’t pass…
“Elsewhere in this ongoing federal budget battle, Democratic lawmakers have been begging their Republican counterparts to consider expanding the child tax credit to make more poor children eligible. When Congress last passed such an expansion, in 2021 (with only Democratic votes), the program was phenomenally successful: It slashed child poverty nearly in half. But the expansion was temporary. When it expired, child poverty doubled to its pre-pandemic level.
“There are a few Republican lawmakers, such as retiring Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah), who have heroically supported reviving some form of a child allowance, even for poor kids. But for the most part, others in the party have been somewhere between indifferent and hostile to the idea, instead gunning for more tax breaks for corporations.
“Indeed, if a version of a child tax credit expansion ultimately materializes — and it might in the next few days — that will happen only because Democratic lawmakers explicitly held those corporate tax breaks hostage in exchange for aid to poor kids.”