Checks to families with children comes to an end
To the editor:
The American Rescue Plan, passed in March of this year, increased the Child Tax Credit for 2021, sending checks of $250 or $300 per child to families making less than $150,000 per year ($112,500 for single parent families), and lesser amounts to families earning more.
This was major tax relief for most working families. There is “consistent and broad evidence that this policy is working as intended,” said Zach Parolin, who has studied the program at Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy. It was intended to reduce child poverty, stabilize families, reduce food insecurity, and enhance learning.
The tax credit was only for 2021, so it ended this month. The Build Back Better bill will extend the Child Tax Credit payments, and Congress should pass it quickly.
Republicans are opposed to extending the credit, calling it “federal overreach.” Republicans have consistently been willing to give generous tax credits to profitable major corporations, in some cases reducing corporate taxes to zero, without calling that “federal overreach.”
Our nation’s children should be as important as corporate American. Nearly all other industrial nations in the world invest in their child citizens. The United States should, too.
Susan McGuire
Bokeelia