Democrats Push Biden To Revive Child Tax Credit After BBB Failure

Senate Democrats are pressing President Joe Biden not to give up on the child tax credit, and they now want to get it passed in any part of the Build Back Better spending bill that is able to get through the Senate.

As part of last year’s coronavirus relief package, the IRS paid most American parents up to $300 for each child who was 17 and under per month from July to December. The payments were stopped this month after an extension failed to pass through Congress.

Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet (Colorado), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Cory Booker (New Jersey), Raphael Warnock (Georgia) and Ron Wyden (Oregon) penned a letter to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris outlining the importance of including the child tax credit in BBB.

“The child tax credit represents the biggest investment in American families and children in a generation” and is “a signature domestic policy achievement of this administration, and has been an overwhelming success,” the letter said.”The consequences of failing to extend the CTC expansion are dire, particularly as families face another wave of the COVID-19 pandemic … Raising taxes on working families is the last thing we should do during a pandemic.”

Child tax credit extension was stalled with BBB when Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) said last year that he couldn’t support the sweeping $2 trillion social spending bill. Last week, Biden announced that he would sign off on whatever “chunks” of the bill could get through the Senate.

Manchin has proposed including a work requirement in regards to the child tax credit making it onto a slimmed-down BBB.

“There are two really big components that I feel strongly about that I’m not sure I can get in the package,” Manchin said earlier in the month. “One is the child care tax credit, and the other is help for cost of community colleges.”

As of last week, Manchin reported that there had not been any negotiations about a version of BBB that he could support.