[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.
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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