Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer continued to press his Democratic colleagues to get the budget reconciliation bill that includes President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan passed in the next two weeks during his opening floor statement Tuesday. He announced his intent to push the bill through quickly in a letter to Democrats Monday, and assured them in his floor statement Tuesday that he is progressing toward that goal. That was ahead of an all-conference lunch, a Tuesday fixture in the Senate, where the members tend to fight these kinds of things out.
“Senate Democrats continue our work to pass President Biden’s Build Back Better Act before Christmas,” he said on the floor. “[S]ticking to our deadline will be worth it for one simple reason: At its core, Build Back Better is the best shot we’ve had in decades to help families lower costs, to cut taxes for working and middle class Americans, and create good paying jobs while fighting the climate crisis.” He added for West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin’s benefit, “economists from across the ideological spectrum have said, it will not—will not—worsen inflation, something we are seeing happening across the world, not just in the U.S.”
Manchin has reverted to that complaint despite the fact that it has been debunked loudly and repeatedly for weeks now, and that economic indicators point to inflation cooling along with the supply chain getting back to normal function. Manchin apparently has extremely selective senses when it comes to reality. “I haven’t seen that. I’ve heard that. I don’t know how you control inflation when there’s the first year of spending that will be quite large. It’s an awful lot more federal dollars going at a time of uncertainty.”
There’s a damned good reason for Congress to get this done before the end of the year—the expanded Child Tax Credit payments will end as monthly payments with the checks sent Dec. 15 unless this is done before then. The stakes are pretty huge for the majority of America’s families.
A large group of House Democrats is reminding the Senate of that deadline. Ninety-five Democrats, including members beyond the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), are urging the Senate to move quickly. ”Our members stood united in passing the Build Back Better Act last month and now it is time for the Senate to act before the expanded Child Tax Credit payments expire at the end of December,” Washington State Rep. Suzan DelBene said in a statement. She’s the chair of the generally corporate-friendly New Democrat Coalition. It’s not as conservative as the Blue Dogs, but it’s nowhere near as liberal as the CPC.
She went on, “American families cannot afford to lose this critical middle-class tax cut, which has cut child poverty in half and helped millions of families afford childcare, pay their bills, and put food on the table.”
“I think it’s extraordinarily important to keep this program on track,” Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the chair of the Finance Committee, recently said about the Child Tax Credit payments. The bill continues the American Rescue Plan’s COVID-19 relief policy, increasing the tax credit from the pre-pandemic standard of $2,000 annually per child to as much as $3,000 or $3,600 depending on the age of the child, with the payments being sent monthly rather than issued after taxes are filed. About 90% of children are in families that qualify—some 65 million U.S. children.
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The results of the program have been profound. It boosts families’ incomes every month, allowing them to pay rent, utilities, groceries, transportation—all their monthly bills as they arise. It has eased the strain for millions of families of meeting those monthly bills. Significantly, the program was extended to families with no earnings, or low earnings—they get the full benefit as well. That scooped in some 27 million children, “including roughly half of Black and Latino children and half of children in rural communities,” that had been left out of the program previously. As of July of this year, with just three monthly payments having been issued, child poverty was cut 25% and 3 million kids were lifted out of poverty, according to one analysis from Columbia University.
If the program ends, the maximum annual credit will be cut by $1,000 per school-aged child, $1,600 for young children. The payment will cease to be sent out every month, and those lowest-income families will lose out. That clearly means increasing hardship and hunger for those families. “If the credit’s expansions are taken away, poverty rates among Black, Latino, and AIAN children would be an estimated 8 to 9 percentage points higher than what they would have been with the expansions still in place — 22 percent rather than 13 percent for Black children, 21 percent rather than 12 percent for Latino children, and 18 percent rather than 10 percent for AIAN children,” the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) estimates.
CBPP breaks down the numbers by state, finding that 346,000 children under age 18 will lose out in Manchin’s West Virginia if the program isn’t extended. That’s 93% of the state’s children, 50,000 of whom are at risk of slipping back below the poverty line or deeper into poverty. That’s what’s at stake here: The ability of American families to continue to survive the ongoing pandemic and the economic difficulties it’s created.