Since the expanded child tax credit has been a success and has helped millions of struggling families, it makes no sense to most reasonable people to shut it down. Clearly, there's lots to be angry about in the country these days, but ending the child tax credit boost is downright cruel, short-sighted, and self-defeating.
Democrat Joe Manchin, the Maserati-driving, yacht-owning Senator from West Virginia, doesn't see it that way. He's targeting the tax credit for families and holding up the Build Back Better Act. It must be that he thinks struggling West Virginia families don't need a little cash. One wonders if his staffers haven't told him that without the cash boost, hundreds of thousands of kids could be pushed back below the poverty line. Maybe Manchin hasn't read reports showing that the payments have slashed poverty and hunger rates, lifting up millions of kids into healthier and more secure lives. It seems like a no-brainer to most reasonable people that giving people money to buy food is more efficient than giving out food. There's a powerful economic argument for the tax credit, too. The recipients aren't the only ones who benefit. According to a congressional estimate, the payments put an estimated $19.3 billion back into local economies every month.
Most people agree that lifting kids out of poverty is the right thing to do, although the moral argument doesn't move Manchin and the Republican Grinches, who consider the child tax credit payments to be handouts to the undeserving, who should be pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. It's trickle up economics to extend the program for another year, as was proposed in the legislation currently stalled in the Senate, where his royal highness Joe Manchin, won't hear of it. He and the Republicans are suddenly worried about expanding the deficit. Curious how that fear never seems to be an issue when it comes to blowing big holes in the nation's budget with defense spending the Pentagon didn't even request, or with tax cuts for the wealthy. Or how about those fossil fuel subsidies for which Manchin has gone mano-a-mano to the mat. The tens of millions of families getting the tax credit have no juice compared to the rich and influential people who have Manchin's and Republican Grinches' ears.
It's just fine that Elon Musk and his billionaire ilk have enough money to send up rockets for 10 minutes, avoid paying their fair share of taxes, even as he and his crew of moguls rake in millions in taxpayer-funded research subsidies and pandemic assistance. That's perfectly acceptable, so long as there's no danger undeserving families are benefitting from hungry kids being fed.
The last child tax credit checks hit families' bank accounts this week, right before Christmas. Bah humbug Manchin and his Scrooge-like colleagues don't give a hoot for the nation's Tiny Tims. They omit the "everyone" in Tiny Tim's wish: "God bless us everyone."
As you may know, the child tax credit payments began in July as authorized under the American Rescue Plan and have gone to the families of about 60 million kids, about 1 million of them here in my state, Massachusetts. Depending on their income, those families got up to $300 per child per month. According to Allison Bovell-Ammon, director of policy strategy at the Children's Healthwatch at Boston Medical Center, which has been analyzing the payments, some 160,000 kids in my state avoided falling below the poverty line because of the payments.
According to a story in The Boston Globe, researchers from Columbia University found that every dollar in child tax credit payments returns eight dollars in long-term savings. Why? Because "better-fed, more economically stable families mean healthier kids and parents (so lower health care costs), better educational outcomes, higher-paying jobs, and longer, more productive lives." Bovell-Ammon said, "We think about diet-related diseases like cardiovascular diseases and diabetes and the toll they take, but food insecurity and poverty affect so many aspects of someone's ability to be healthy and do well in school."
The proposal in the bill stalled in Congress by Manchin and the family values Republicans (who seem to care more about protecting zygotes than living kids) aims to extend the child tax credit for another year. Many policymakers think it makes sense to extend it permanently, though. I stress, before you go bonkers, that's not what is currently on the table.
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