The last of the child tax credit payments will go out Wednesday unless the Senate passes President Joe Biden's Build Back Better legislation before the new year and send it to his desk for his signature.
As part of the expanded monthly child tax credit payments, families nationwide are receiving their last checks ten days before Christmas. Without the passage of Biden's $1.75 trillion economic plan, the monthly payments will expire and the child tax credit will revert to its much smaller pre-pandemic level.
Parents are heading into the new year with no idea if they will be able to put food on the table for their children, keep their babies in clean diapers or pay rent to keep a roof over their heads, said Patricia Cole, senior director of federal policy at the child advocacy group Zero to Three.
The existing child tax credit was increased by $3,000 from $2,000 in March, with a $600 bonus for kids under the age of 6 for the 2021 tax year. The monthly payments, which began in July, will go through December in deposits of $300 for children under the age of 6 and $250 for those aged 6 to 17 in deposits of $300. The second half will come when families file 2021 tax returns next year.
Since the first payments were disbursed in July, the Treasury Department and IRS have delivered nearly $93 billion to families, according to the agency. In July of the first payment, the Census Bureau s Household Pulse Survey data showed that 55 percent of middle-income families spent their money on food, more than 26 percent spent it on clothes, and 23 percent spent it on costs related to school and after school.
The Senate's final legislative sprint of 2021 is the biggest question that is looming over Capitol Hill, as Congress begins its final legislative sprint of 2021: whether or not the economic safety net and climate bill will be passed. Senators have less than two weeks left to meet their self-imposed Christmas deadline, and it could all depend on the centrist Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., who is the linchpin of the 50-50 Senate.
The Senate will have to change it to win the votes of all 50 Democratic-voting senators after the House passed the Build Back Better Act last month.
While her weekly news conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called the payments essential. When asked if the House could do a separate bill from Build Back Better to extend the child tax credit payments now, Pelosi said the two couldn't be separated and while it would pass in the House, whether we could pass it in the Senate remains to be seen. But I don't want to let anybody off the hook on the BBB to say, 'Well, we covered that one thing' so now the pressure is off, said Pelosi. That is a great leverage in a discussion on the BBB that the children and their families suffer without that payment. ParentsTogether Action, a family advocacy nonprofit, conducted a survey of its more than 2.5 million members in advance of the final payment.
When asked what would happen to their family if the payments stop after this month, 50 percent said it will be more difficult for them to meet their basic needs and 36 percent said they will no longer be able to meet their family's basic needs.
Bethany Robertson, co-director of ParentsTogether, called for the Senate to vote on Build Back Better because millions of families are on the brink. Pelosi concluded her news conference by saying she was still optimistic about passing Build Back Better, and maybe even if it was after the first of the year, I hope it is not, that it could be retroactive if it's early enough in the first of the year.