[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 123 (Wednesday, July 14, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4884-S4886]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Child Tax Credit

  Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, first I want to recognize my colleague 
from Connecticut, his moving tribute to a great American, and also 
thank him for his steadfast leadership on issues of gun safety in this 
country.
  I am standing here with my colleagues today to talk about what is 
going on in this country around empowering children. We have a big 
thing happening tomorrow with the vast majority of families with kids 
across the country.
  As of tomorrow, they will start seeing more money in their bank 
accounts every year for the rest of the year. These payments are the 
result of changes that we have made to the child tax credit, which was 
signed into law by President Biden as part of the American Rescue Plan 
because of the changes we advocated for.
  What President Biden made law, more families and children are going 
to benefit from the child tax credit. More than ever before in history, 
in fact, this will be the greatest cut in overall child poverty in the 
history of America for this coming year.
  So starting tomorrow, 90 percent of kids in America--90 percent of 
their families across the country--will start to see these payments for 
the rest of this year, up to $300 for every child in a household under 
6 and $250 for every child in the household ages 6 through 17. For 
families in suburbs and cities and rural areas, for families across the 
country, this policy is transformative.
  For the family of people with essential workers in Florida, the 
grandmother raising three children in California, a single mom in 
Pennsylvania working the same job for 20 years, for a parent in Utah--
you can go on and on and on--this is one of the most transformative 
policy changes made in our Nation in more than a century.
  This policy means stability. It means help is on the way. It means 
hope is here.
  In my home State, Margarita from Passaic, NJ, who is raising three 
kids on her own while working two jobs, one before sunrise, starting 
tomorrow, she will see hundreds of dollars a month to help her pay the 
electric bill, help her make rent, and help her children succeed in 
school.
  For the family of two educators with kids in New York, tomorrow is 
transformative. Washington State, North Dakota, blue State, so-called 
red State--all over this country, we are seeing a transformation.
  This is what a mom from Kansas said:

       [This child tax credit] would help so much for single moms 
     like me to be able to feel secure as a parent. If at any time 
     something were to happen to me, such as a car repair, a 
     doctor visit, even a book fair for my children, I am just not 
     making enough to have any extra for anything other than 
     bills. Shoes and coats, maybe a ball glove. Karate or dance 
     lessons to improve social skills and athletic abilities and 
     teach children teamwork would be possible; [and] maybe even 
     at Christmas since they didn't get one in 2020.

  For middle-class families trying to stay afloat, lower income 
families desperate to make ends meet, and families living in poverty 
struggling to put food on the table, tomorrow is a new start. For 
millions of Americans across the country, from this body, our 
President, tomorrow will begin a historically unparalleled moment.
  Senator Brown, Senator Bennet, Senator Warnock, and I, along with our 
House colleagues, are going to continue to do what must be done. This 
change for this year--cutting child poverty, empowering millions of 
families, 90 percent of whom with kids will see a benefit--we must make 
this permanent. I will fight alongside my colleagues to see that this 
is not a one-time benefit for 1 year but a permanent change that we--
change our status. We are the 36th wealthiest Nation on the planet, and 
we are 4th from the bottom in child poverty. We are second to last in 
terms of child allowances. We in America have to make this country live 
up to its promise to every child that we are the cornerstone of the 
idea of the American dream; that we are the most fertile soil for which 
a child could thrive; that we love our children not just in words but 
in the policies we make. This is a historic moment.
  The one thing I will say to anyone listening to my words, because, as 
my colleague knows, some families are eligible but might not benefit, 
please, we need to make sure that portal--that people know to go to 
childtaxcredit.gov to get the information. All of us have an obligation 
to help everyone avail themselves of this policy. I believe, God 
willing, we will make it permanent.
  I now turn to my colleague Senator Bennet from Colorado, Mr. 
President, with your permission.
  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, we are all here today--I want to say on 
this floor how much I love my colleagues from New Jersey and from Ohio 
who are here with me today on the floor to celebrate this incredibly 
important milestone.
  I love you for your commitment to the country and for your commitment 
to our kids.
  I want to wish your brother well because I know that he is recovering 
from his stroke, and you are still taking time to be here on the floor 
to make sure that people who need it the most hear about this tax 
credit. I want to thank you for that.
  I have heard the Senator from Ohio, just like the Senator from New 
Jersey, talk about the lives of real people in their States. I have sat 
in the chair where the Presiding Officer is, listening to Senator Brown 
talk about families in Ashtabula or Zanesville or Dayton or Cleveland 
or Cincinnati or Toledo and what the policies that we pass in this body 
either--you know, the difference they make or very often the difference 
they don't make to real people at home, to the people you work for and 
represent in Newark.
  I think about a mom, I say to my colleague from Colorado, the 
Presiding Officer, a mom in Rifle, CO, who was in an early childhood 
center there, and she was so happy to be there. The other

[[Page S4885]]

moms were happy to be there, too, because until they had that early 
childhood center, they had to drive 30 miles to Glenwood Canyon to get 
to Glenwood Springs to put their kid in daycare so they could work, and 
now they could actually have it in their community. What she said to me 
was this: I work so I can have health insurance. Every single dollar I 
make goes to pay for this early childhood center so I can work.
  It is that triangle that so many Americans are caught in because we 
have had an economy that for 50 years has worked really well for the 
top 10 percent and not for anybody else in America. For too long, it 
seemed like Washington wasn't paying any attention to that. I mean, 
what was our solution to that? To spend $5.6 trillion on two wars in 
the Middle East that lasted for 20 years? To come to this floor to cut 
taxes not for working people, not for the people who needed it, but for 
the wealthiest people in the country at a time when our income 
inequality was higher than it was at any time since before the Great 
Depression? It made no sense.
  It was like if the mayor of Denver--who the Presiding Officer used to 
be, so let's just imagine that for a second--it is as if the mayor of 
Denver said to the people of Denver: We are going to borrow more money 
than we have ever borrowed.
  I would say, as a concerned citizen of Denver, to the mayor: That 
worries me. I would like to know what you are spending it on. Are you 
spending it on parks?
  Nope.
  Mental health services? We certainly need those.
  Nope.
  Homeless?
  Nope.
  Our roads and our bridges?
  No
  Schools?
  No.
  You are borrowing all this money. What are you spending it on?
  The mayor would have said: Well, I am going to give the money we are 
borrowing to the two richest neighborhoods in Denver and expect that 
somehow it is going to trickle down to everybody else.
  That sounds crazy, but that was the Bush tax policy. That is the 
Trump tax policy, sixty-five percent of that bill for what he called 
the middle class going to the top 5 percent in America. That is why 
this is such a new day.
  I have said on this floor before that it is long past time that we 
started treating America's children like they are our children and that 
we wouldn't accept the conditions so many kids live in unless we 
thought they were someone else's children.
  This country, as the Senator from New Jersey has said before, is 38 
out of 41 industrialized countries in terms of childhood poverty. In 
other words, we have the 38th worst childhood poverty in the 
industrialized world. Only three countries are worse than we are. The 
poorest population in America? Our children. And we have some of the 
lowest economic mobility of any country in the industrialized world. We 
tell ourselves we are the land of opportunity, but we haven't looked 
like that for a very long time, and the policies that have been passed 
here haven't helped. That is where the child tax credit comes into 
being.
  We increased it to $3,000, $3,600 for kids under the age of 6. We 
made it fully refundable so the poorest kids, the millions of poor kids 
who have never benefited from the tax credit before because their 
parents made too little money, now have the benefit of it, and it is 
going to be paid out starting tomorrow on a monthly basis. So when 
families are making decisions about how to pay the rent, put a little 
food on the table, buy a few hours of daycare so that they can stay at 
work and earn a living, they will be able to do it. So they can work, 
as the Senator from Ohio so eloquently said, with dignity.
  In my view, this should be just the beginning of creating an economy 
that, when it grows, grows for everybody, not just for the people at 
the very top. It strengthens our democracy by giving everybody a sense 
that they have a real stake in the economy and that their kids are 
going to be able to live a brighter life than the life they live. That 
is what it is supposed to be in America.
  I am grateful to stand here today with my two colleagues and with the 
Presiding Officer to say that finally, finally, with this President, we 
are treating America's children like they are America's children, and 
we don't have to accept chronic childhood poverty as a chronic feature 
of our economy or our democracy. We can have an ambition that is 
greater than that for our country and for our children, and we can say 
to our kids: You are important to us. In some ways, you are all that 
matter to us, and the position we put you in to be able to get an 
education and contribute to society and help lead the country, 
participate in our economy, in our democracy, that is our priority, and 
that is what we care about.
  I think that is President Biden's priority, and he has reflected it 
incredibly well in this policy.
  I will turn it over to the Senator from Ohio just by saying that now 
we have to do the very hard and important work of making this a 
permanent part of our Tax Code so that we cut childhood poverty 
permanently in half in this country. I would like us to end childhood 
poverty in the United States. I think that would be a very worthy 
aspiration for all of us to have.
  With that, I yield the floor to my wonderful colleague from Ohio, who 
has been an incredible leader on this from even before I was in the 
Senate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator Ohio.
  Mr. BROWN. Michael Bennet, thank you. You said this is a new day. I 
loved how you set that up. The mayor of Denver gets a tax cut or at 
least pours money into the richest neighborhoods in Denver, expecting 
that to trickle down or trickle out to help other neighborhoods and 
other people. It obviously doesn't work that way any more than the--I 
was going to say the Bush tax cut, but it has been their playbook for 
years. Whenever they get a majority, they give a tax cut to rich 
people, arguing it will trickle down. It never does. Senator Booker has 
been so articulate about that. As you say, Senator Bennet, it is a new 
day for this country.
  I think the three of us think--and I think that Senator Hickenlooper, 
the Presiding Officer, has thought this, as have most Members of the 
Senate--that this is perhaps the most important thing we have done in 
this Senate in 25 years.
  Tomorrow, parents across the country will check their bank accounts. 
Not all of them are going to know what Cory Booker, Michael Bennet, and 
all of us did, but they are going to see, most importantly in many 
ways--maybe my religious faith teaches me this. It is almost better 
that these people have these--they get these checks in Cleveland and 
Akron and Mansfield, and they have no idea how they got them. They 
didn't know I had anything to do it as their Senator; they just know 
their lives are better.
  Families will see $250 or $300 direct-deposited into their accounts 
every month for the next 6 months, and then they get the rest of the 
year in a lump sum. Then, as Senator Bennet and Senator Booker said, it 
is up to us to make this permanent.
  In my State, 92 percent of the kids in the State are eligible. We 
have a great majority--at least, we think, 90 percent of them will see 
these checks this week either in their bank account or in their 
mailbox. We have to make sure we get the other children who are 
eligible. Their parents may not have filed a tax return, and those 
families need to go to childtaxcredit.gov to make sure they get this 
benefit.
  Even before this pandemic, we all know hard work wasn't paying off 
for millions of workers. We have seen in the last 20 years that 
productivity has gone up. Corporate profits have exploded. CEO pay has 
soared almost unimaginably. Yet wages have essentially been flat. That 
has gone on for decades even though the cost of everything is up, 
especially the cost of raising children.
  Our child tax credit recognizes the fact that raising children is 
work. It happens to be the most--maybe it is not compensated the same 
way, but it happens to be the most important work any family can do. 
But from childcare to health insurance, to transportation, we have seen 
that a hard day's work doesn't begin to cover expenses for so many 
parents, and even middle-class families don't feel stable.

[[Page S4886]]

  As a result, 2 weeks ago, we were out of session, and I spent the 
week in Fremont, in Defiance, in Cleveland, and in Columbus, Dayton, 
Cincinnati, Youngstown, and Toledo talking to people about the child 
tax credit. The stories I heard from people--these were mostly parents 
who will benefit. These are some community activists whose kids may 
have been grown or don't have kids. But the stories I heard, things 
like--Senato Bennet and I had a discussion with people from Denver and 
Cleveland one day on Zoom a couple weeks ago, too, and we heard over 
and over that parents were saying: Every month we just have to figure 
out, during the last week of the month, how are we going to pay our 
rent.

  Now those families will have a little more comfort in knowing and 
less anxiety knowing they will be able to make their rent payment.
  I heard a number of parents say: Well, now I can send my son, for the 
first time, to scout camp or to day camp during the summer. Other 
parents said: I don't have to choose between the food we need to buy 
and buying diapers. I don't have to reuse diapers.
  All the kinds of stories, we heard. People were saying: I don't have 
to work that second job and be away at night. I can get daycare on my 
regular job and get the benefits and have a little money so that I can 
do these things.
  And the stories are as limitless as the number of people who are 
involved.
  And maybe the best part of this--and Michael and Cory and I have 
talked about it. Maybe the best part of this is we have SNAP benefits. 
We know that is important for hungry families. We know the hungry 
people and the children especially. We do the rental assistance, 
emergency rental. We know how important that is. But these dollars--
this $250 or $300 a month, it goes to families, and they make the 
decision about what they need. I don't make it.
  The senior Senator or the junior Senator--even though the junior 
Senator is older, right, than the senior Senator? I am confused.
  But the Senators from Colorado don't make the decision. The Senator 
from New Jersey and I don't make the decision. These decisions are made 
by the mothers and fathers who go to their mailbox and get this check 
or see it in their direct payment.
  So we know that this is not just good for those families. It means 
dollars in their pockets. It means they can make decisions they 
couldn't have made. It means they can build a foundation for their own 
children to have more opportunity--all of that. But this is also really 
good for the community. It means more dollars are spent at local 
restaurants, more dollars are spent at local stores. So that is an 
important part of this, too, that it will help to lift up our economy.
  Families aren't putting this money in a Swiss bank account, unlike 
the tax cuts that Senator Bennet talked about with the Trump tax cuts 
that every Republican supported, virtually, and that blew a hole in the 
budget. That money was put in Swiss bank accounts. It doesn't trickle 
down. This money is spent in the community.
  This is how we grow the economy. This is how we invest in the people 
who make it work. We don't shovel tax cuts to the very top and hope it 
trickles down. We know it never does. With these tax credits, we show 
parents and workers: We are on your side.
  We won't stop fighting until these tax credits are permanent. 
Senators Booker and Bennet have talked passionately and persuasively 
about that.
  I would add a couple other thanks here. Two of my staff are sitting 
in the back of this hall, Katie Mulhall and Chad Bolt, who have made 
this tax, working with Senator Bennet's and Senator Booker's and 
Senator Warnock's staff--in making these tax cuts to reduce the poverty 
rate and making this happen this session with President Biden's active 
support.
  I also would call out two staff people, one of whom is still in the 
office and one who is now working in the House of Representatives, 
Jeremy Hekhuis and Gideon Bragin, who began work on this in 2013, when 
we first started working with Rosa DeLauro and the work that she had 
done. I thank all of them for making this happen.
  I especially thank my colleagues from Colorado and Georgia and New 
Jersey. We keep fighting to give these families the peace of mind that 
these tax credits will be there for them up until their children are 18 
so they can raise their kids with a little less anxiety and a little 
more comfort and a whole lot more opportunity.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I just was so inspired by--I am only going 
to be 1 minute--something Senator Brown said in his remarks about his 
staff that I also want to mention Charlie Anderson, who is no longer 
with me because he quit me to go work for the administration. But if it 
hadn't been for him, I would be very surprised if we would all be here 
today. So I wanted to say thank you to Charlie for never giving up on 
this and for holding me accountable as we did the work together.
  I also am not going to address the issue about junior versus senior 
Senators from Colorado, just to observe what a wonderful delegation it 
is we have from the State of Colorado.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana