{"id":1391059,"date":"2022-03-21T05:10:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-21T09:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1391059"},"modified":"2022-03-21T07:45:45","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T11:45:45","slug":"keeping-the-expanded-child-tax-credit-because-covid-would-be-absurd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/keeping-the-expanded-child-tax-credit-because-covid-would-be-absurd\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping The Expanded Child Tax Credit \u2018Because Covid\u2019 Would Be Absurd"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fkeeping-the-expanded-child-tax-credit-because-covid-would-be-absurd%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1391059&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/14514671309_1a8bdeeda2_k.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Until 2020, the maximum amount a family could claim as a child tax credit was $2,000 per child, ending in the income year before that child reached 17 years old. But the American Rescue Plan, passed in March 2021 as another response to Covid-19, contained a provision referred to as the Child Tax Credit of 2021. This increased the per-child credit to $3,600 for kids younger than 6 and $3,000 for those 6 to 17 and authorized monthly payments as a sort of \u201cdraw\u201d on the annual credit.<\/p>\n<p>Notice how I sneaked in the reference to Covid? So did legislators. It wasn\u2019t lost on any of them, including Republicans, that once this increased \u201ccredit\u201d was introduced\u2014no matter the rationale\u2014it had a good chance of becoming part of the economic furniture.<\/p>\n<p>The ARP, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/american-rescue-plan\/\">as described on the White House website<\/a>, was \u201cPresident Biden\u2019s plan to provide direct relief to Americans, contain COVID-19, and rescue the economy.\u201d Presumably, then, the intent was to mitigate the effects of the virus\u2014and the policy response of lockdowns\u2014both on the economy and on individuals and families.<\/p>\n<p>There is no doubt these monthly payments helped millions of families who suffered hardships as a result of workplace shutdowns, school closures, lack of childcare, and illness. In this sense, the president\u2019s plan did provide \u201cdirect relief.\u201d Whether or not it \u201ccontained Covid-19\u201d or rescued the economy are debates for another time.<\/p>\n<p>But one year later the question has become whether the tax credit increase is still warranted. To the left, there is no question. It would be cruel to strip families of this benefit and plunge millions of kids into poverty.<\/p>\n<p>Gone is any mention of the \u201crescue\u201d aspect of the plan. It\u2019s understood, although rarely uttered out loud, that this was simply the camel\u2019s nose under the tent, and the real intent was to broaden the redistribution of income already represented by traditional child credits.<\/p>\n<p>The current push is to extend the increases, if not indefinitely, at least for another year. In other words, we may not need to rescue families from Covid effects any longer, but let\u2019s give them another year to rely on the payments. Surely, without them these desperate kids will be thrown back into the poverty that they may (or may not) have been experiencing in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>The latest proposals would offer a married couple a tax credit of $350 a month starting with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.romney.senate.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/family-security-act_one-pager.pdf\">a positive pregnancy test<\/a>. Need to plan for that new car seat and diaper bag? Don\u2019t wait until the sleepless nights start. Get a check from the government and shop now!<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2022\/03\/11\/you-will-see-the-wrath-progressives-warn-biden-against-cutting-down-agenda-00016752\">recent Politico article<\/a> reports leftist lawmakers are warning the president he will \u201csee the wrath\u201d of voters if he agrees to abandon \u201can expanded tax credit that dramatically reduced child poverty.\u201d Never mind that the credit was not supposed to have the lasting effect of reducing child poverty. If the left wing of the Democratic Party can cement the narrative that eliminating the Covid-era benefit will hurt \u201cworking families\u201d and innocent children, this is likely to become received truth.<\/p>\n<p>But what of the idea that these payments are not giveaways but credits, a reduction of the taxes that parents would otherwise pay? After all, Republicans have been the perennial champions of \u201cletting people keep more of what they earn,\u201d and a tax credit does precisely that.<\/p>\n<p>Having raised nine children to adulthood, I am no stranger to stretching a dollar, and I certainly wouldn\u2019t have turned down the chance to keep more of my family\u2019s income in the monthly challenge to keep everyone in shoes. In a broad sense, I am all for lower taxes and for allowing Americans to make more of their own decisions on how to spend their hard-earned dollars.<\/p>\n<p>But in the case of specific credits to young parents, we are asking retirees, childless couples, and single earners to bear an even greater share of the national burden, when they have been hurt by the lockdowns as well. To some extent, we have always done this by extending tax credits to parents. But doing it in this dishonest way\u2014asking ballooning entitlements to masquerade as Covid relief\u2014is beneath us.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2022\/03\/11\/perspectives\/enhanced-child-tax-credit-inflation\/index.html\">CNN declared<\/a> last week, \u201cPrices just keep rising. It\u2019s time to revive the enhanced child tax credit.\u201d Clearly, this is no longer about rescuing the country from the Covid economy. It\u2019s now meant to be a rescue from the Biden economy.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Cathi Warren is senior copy editor at RealClearPolitics.com and has written widely in the nonprofit sector. She is the mother of nine and grandmother of dozens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Until 2020, the maximum amount a family could claim as a child tax credit was $2,000 per child, ending in the income year before that child reached 17 years old.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1391059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1391059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1391059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1391059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1391059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1391059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1391059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}