Child tax credit

The followed statement is laced with the words poverty and children. In reality the tax credit was not directed at the poor or children living in poverty and there is no way to determine how the credit was spent each month or on what and certainly no way to claim the payments lifted children out of poverty or its expiration returned them to poverty.

Pandering at its best.

Washington, D.C. — Following a report from the Census Bureau finding that childhood poverty more than doubled last year, Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet made the case about the critical need to restore expanded, enhanced Child Tax Credit (CTC). 

During a press conference urging Congress to fight child poverty and expand the CTC, Bennet said:

“We’ve now seen the largest increase in childhood poverty that we’ve ever seen in this country, the richest country in the world. On the other hand, we know that it’s in the backdrop of the promises that we made about [the Child Tax Credit] actually being fulfilled.”

“30 million children benefited from this. We cut childhood poverty in the United States of America in half. 90 percent of the kids in Colorado and across the country benefited from this.”

“I’ve been here on Christmas Eve and on New Year’s Eve when tax cuts for the biggest corporations in America were expiring. I’ve been here when tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans were expiring. And I’ve seen the Senate stay here until 2 o’clock in the morning to make sure those tax cuts were extended. In this case, we turned our back on America’s children. For once, we treated America’s children like they were our children, not someone else’s children, in the richest country in the world. But in the end, we turned our backs on them.”

On MSNBC’s 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle, Bennet said:

“We turned our backs on America’s kids. We enacted a policy that cut child poverty in half, which is what the proponents of this bill, including myself, said it would… Families got the checks every month and they were able to pay for a little bit of extra food or buy some school clothes for their kids, or not have to make such a stressful decision about affording rent or paying for health care or after school stuff. They spent their money on kids, and the richest country in the world cut child poverty in half. Now we have seen it double, in effect, because we did not extend the child tax credit.

“My goal is to end childhood poverty in this country. I think that that should be a goal for the richest country in the world. We now know how to do it, and we’ve got to fight to make this child tax credit, the enhanced child tax credit, permanent.”

Watch the full interview HERE.

In an interview with ABC for Grand Junction, Colo., Bennet said:

“[Because of the expanded Child Tax Credit] families on the West Slope of Colorado got a little bit of breathing room so they could help a little with the rent. They could pay down to not make such a tough choice between food and other bills at the end of the month or buy school clothes for their kids. It really was real breathing room.”

In an interview with FOX for Denver, Colo., Bennet said:

“In a country as wealthy as the United States, [childhood poverty] is inexcusable.”

“5 million more kids in America have fallen into poverty as a result of the child tax credit alone being taken away.”

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Here is what the report actually says:
The official poverty rate in 2022 was 11.5%, with 37.9 million people in poverty. Neither the rate nor the number in poverty was significantly different from 2021. The SPM rate in 2022 was 12.4%, an increase of 4.6 percentage points from 2021. This increase can be attributed to key changes in federal tax policy, including the expiration of temporary expansions to the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) as well as the end of pandemic-era stimulus payments.
The SPM child poverty rate more than doubled, from 5.2% in 2021 to 12.4% in 2022.

The Supplement Poverty Rate (SPM) is the rate including government assistance programs for a household. That doubling is based on households with children, and elimination of several programs, not money specifically for children. SPM rates also increased for 18- to 64-year-olds and people age 65 and older.

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Here is how the enhanced child tax credit worked.

This amount may vary by income. These people qualify for the full Child Tax Credit (CHILDCTC):

• Married couples with income under $150,000 ✔️✔️
• Families with a single parent (also called Head of Household) with income under $112,500
• Everyone else with income under $75,000

These people will qualify for at least $2,000 of Child Tax Credit (CHILDCTC), which comes out to $166 per child each month:

• Married couples with income under $400,000 ✔️✔️
• Families with a single parent (also called Head of Household) with income under $200,000
• Everyone else with income under $200,000