Dems Let Child Tax Credits Expire But Cry ‘Crisis’ Over Obamacare

Contrary to the media’s blaring headlines about “the health care crisis,” there’s another question the press should answer but won’t. To wit: Why is it only a “crisis” when a Covid-era entitlement expires on Republicans’ watch?

While Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., eggs on the press by pontificating about a “health care crisis” caused by the recent expiration of enhanced Obamacare subsidies, he and his colleagues selectively and cynically ignore the recent past. The same Senate Democrats who now call the lapse of enhanced Obamacare subsidies a “crisis” let a far larger Covid-era program expire on their own party’s watch with barely a peep of objection.

Covid-era Child Tax Credit

In 2021, the American Rescue Plan Act, enacted in the Biden administration’s opening months, significantly expanded the child tax credit. The law increased the maximum available credit from $2,000 per child to $3,600 per child under age 6, and $3,000 for other kids under age 18. It also made the credit fully refundable for families with no income tax liability and provided for periodic monthly disbursements to beneficiaries. But fiscal and political constraints meant that the legislation enhanced the child tax credit for 2021 only.

House Democrats included a one-year extension of the enhanced child tax credit in their so-called Build Back Better legislation, which they passed in November 2021. But objections from Sen. Joe Manchin to the costly House bill meant Schumer spent months negotiating a slimmed-down package with the West Virginia Democrat.

Senate Democrats Oppose an Extension

When that smaller package came to the Senate floor in August 2022 without an extension of the enhanced child tax credit, Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont offered an amendment extending the program for four years, funded by a corporate tax hike. All of Sanders’ Senate colleagues present that day, including all Senate Democrats, voted against his amendment, with two not voting.

On the Senate floor, Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Michael Bennet, D-Colo., both claimed they supported an extension but could not vote for Sanders’ amendment for fear it would kill the entire bill. Sanders responded with a reasonable enough question: Even if Manchin opposed his amendment, “Why would … getting 48 votes on this amendment bring the overall bill down?” He received no substantive reply.

The enhanced child tax credit that expired on Democrats’ watch had a far bigger effect than the enhanced Obamacare subsidies. Internal Revenue Service data shows that in 2021, just under 62 million children received child tax credit payments, nearly triple the roughly 21 million Americans with subsidized Obamacare coverage. The child tax credit also had a larger fiscal consequence; a permanent extension would have cost nearly $1.6 trillion over ten years, or more than four times as much as a $350 billion permanent revival of the enhanced Obamacare subsidies.

Hypocrisy Much?

The same Democrats who now blare, as Schumer did, about “a life and death vote” on Obamacare can’t reconcile their deafening silence when the much larger enhanced child tax credit expired on their watch. Their credulous acolytes among the press aid and abet these efforts, with sensational headlines about “skyrocketing health care costs” omitting mention of Democrats’ hypocrisy a few short years ago. Any objective observer would ask a simple question: Why is it only a “crisis” when a spending program expires on Republicans’ watch?

A few weeks ago, I emailed Schumer’s press office and noted the disparity in the way Senate Democrats have treated the potential expiration of these two Covid-era programs. I asked if the senator regretted his 2022 vote against extending the enhanced child tax credit. I also asked if Schumer regretted not shutting down the federal government in late 2021 — during the Biden presidency — to force through an extension of the enhanced child tax credit, much as he and his colleagues did over the Obamacare subsidies earlier this year.

I haven’t heard back from the senator’s staff, and I don’t expect to. The questions answer themselves.

Democrats may claim that Manchin’s implacable opposition meant the enhanced child tax credit was doomed to expire and that their lockstep votes against an extension sought to shield moderate colleagues from a politically difficult amendment raising corporate taxes. But that scenario raises an obvious question that a quiescent press should, but likely won’t, dare to ask: If Chuck Schumer was just playing politics then, what exactly is he doing now?