For now, the new childcare tax credit expansion (CTC) that begins July 15 is in place only for the next six months. The effort that will lift millions of children out of poverty is the brainchild of Colorado Senator Michael Bennet (D) and the effort to make it permanent, as a long-term tool to support children’s futures, has just begun.
U.S. Senator Michael Bennet
Bennet discussed several topics this morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, including the Child Tax Credit Expansion. In March, President Joe Biden signed into law a one-year expansion of the CTC, based on Bennet’s American Family Act, in the American Rescue Plan Act.
In his American Families Plan, Biden proposed permanent, full refundability of the CTC and an extension of the Rescue Plan’s CTC expansion through 2025. Bennet is continuing to work with the administration and his colleagues in Congress with the goal of ensuring the entire CTC expansion is made permanent.
“It will cut childhood poverty in this country almost in half,” said Bennet. “The way it works is it goes from $2,000 a kid to $3,000, and $3,600 for kids under the age of six. It’s fully refundable which means, for the first time in the country’s history, the millions of children who are the poorest children will receive it, and it will be paid out starting on July 15 on a monthly basis for the next six months.”
Bennet reiterated that this child tax credit will benefit 65 million American children. Almost 90 percent of America’s kids will have this benefit until the end of the year.
“Right now, our fight is to make it permanent, and that’s what we’re trying to do. I mean, we have one of the highest childhood poverty rates in the industrialized world,” explained Bennet. “The population in our country that is poorest are our children — which is a disgrace. And childhood poverty costs our country almost a trillion dollars a year.”
“So, here is an opportunity finally for the federal government to intercede on the behalf of working families, on poor families, and make a difference in their lives,” he added. “It certainly has made me more optimistic than I have been in the last 11 years that I’ve been in the Senate, and I give the Biden Administration huge credit for leading on this.”
Bennet also talked about the infrastructure bill and spoke at length about voting rights, ending by saying, “if we believe in democracy, we ought to support the right of people to vote, just as we have in my purple state of Colorado — a third Republican, a third Democratic, and a third independent.”
Watch the Full Interview HERE
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