[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 164 (Wednesday, September 22, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6610-S6613]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          The Child Tax Credit

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, it is always a thrill to come to the floor 
to talk about the child tax credit, especially with three colleagues 
who really are the authors and the most important pushers, if you will, 
of this bill in the Senate.
  I am going to turn it to Senator Bennet--he and I worked on this for 
damn close to a decade now--and Senator Booker. And then we will be 
joined last by Senator Warnock, who has only been in the Senate for a 
year--not even--and has done so much already for the State of Georgia, 
and he is one of the best supporters of this in the U.S. Senate.
  So I will reserve my comments for a little later. Senator Bennet will 
go first.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Ohio, 
Senator Brown, for his remarkable leadership in getting us to this 
point with the child tax credit and with the earned income tax credit 
for childless families which, thanks to his leadership, we have been 
able to triple.

[[Page S6611]]

  But I think we are here today on a really, really momentous matter. 
When I think back to the days when I was the superintendent of schools 
in Denver, most of the kids in my city were kids of color and most were 
living in poverty, and many of their families were working two or three 
jobs. And no matter what they did, they couldn't get their kids out of 
poverty.
  Today, now, I travel the State of Colorado, a State that has got very 
rural areas and very urban areas. If I had to summarize the last 10 
years of my townhalls--10 or 11 years--it is very easy to do it. No 
matter what county I am in, people say: We are killing ourselves, and 
no matter what we do, we can't afford some combination of housing, 
healthcare, higher education, early childhood education--if there is 
any childhood education. We can't save. We feel like our kids are going 
to live a more diminished life than the life we lived.
  That is the anecdotal reflection of an economy that, for 50 years in 
this country, has worked really well for the top 10 percent of 
Americans and not for anybody else. The result of that is, today, the 
United States is 38th out of 41 industrialized countries, in terms of 
childhood poverty.
  The poorest people in our society are our children. The poorest 
generation in the United States of America are our children, which is 
scandalous.
  Senators Brown, Booker, Warnock, and then-Senator Harris, before 
that, and I came together to try to address it and to say that we don't 
have to accept this much childhood poverty as a permanent feature of 
our economy or a permanent feature of our society. We can actually fix 
this by making three changes to the child tax credit: to increase the 
amount and make it fully refundable, so that for the first time in our 
country's history the poorest kids have the benefit of it; and to have 
it paid out on a monthly basis, so that when parents and grandparents 
are at the end of the month trying to make the rent or buy a few more 
groceries or pay for a little bit more childcare, they are able to do 
it in real time.

  I am sure my colleagues on the floor today spent time meeting with 
people in their States over the recess. I did. I met mostly moms, but 
parent after parent after parent, who said to me: For the first time in 
my life, I was able to buy back-to-school clothes, and I didn't 
bankrupt my family. Buying back-to-school clothes was not a catastrophe 
for my family. My kid was able to go to school in a new shirt.
  One mom in Colorado Springs said to me that she bought a bicycle for 
her son so he could take himself to school and participate in 
afterschool programs that he wouldn't have otherwise been able to 
participate in, because he could take himself there and bring himself 
back.
  She said that he had burst a tire in this new bicycle and that she 
was able, because of the child tax credit, not to buy the cheap tire 
that she would ordinarily buy that would break next week--as she said--
but to buy a tire that the kid could rely on. She said, ``That is what 
being poor in America is like; you have to pay a tax on everything,'' 
because you can't buy a decent pair of shoes and you can't buy a decent 
tire for a bike.
  This is a reason why 450 economists have written to the 
administration saying we should be making this permanent. And I believe 
we should be making it permanent. They have also pointed out that it is 
very important for people to hear that this is pro-work. The countries 
that have child allowances like this actually have a higher percentage 
of people in the workforce than we do, because people can use that 
allowance to pay for a little extra childcare so they can stay at work. 
They can use that allowance to help pay to fix a car so they can stay 
at work. This is a pro-work policy.
  Just as importantly, childhood poverty costs our country $1 trillion 
a year. We have been told by Columbia University that we are going to 
see an 8x annual return as a result of cutting childhood poverty in 
half this year, which this policy does, as opposed to spending money 
just to mitigate the effects of childhood poverty.
  So there is every reason in the world that we should make this 
permanent, that we should extend it. In my view, we can't afford not 
to, and that is why we are here today.
  I want to thank my colleague from New Jersey, Senator Booker, 
somebody I have known since he was mayor of Newark and I was the 
superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, and we were working 
together to try to lift up kids in our respective communities. There 
have been many times when I have been on this floor and I have said 
that we are treating America's children like they are someone else's 
children, that only a country that didn't care about their kids would 
treat our kids the way we have.
  But, finally, we are not. Finally, we said: We are not going to 
tolerate this. And a lot of that has to do with the Senator from New 
Jersey's leadership.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I want to thank the two leaders that I 
joined, Senators Brown and Bennet, for championing this issue, not just 
for this Congress but for years. Before I came to Washington, these two 
men were standing up and talking about the moral core of our country.
  If you want to see how a nation is doing, don't look at the buildings 
we build or at how many billionaires we have. Just look at children. 
What is galling me right now is that we have come to the 1-yard line.
  We are at an inflection point in our country where we have to ask a 
question: Who are we?
  My friend Senator Bennet and I have been working with kids well 
before we came here. He rattled off data that should be repeated. I say 
this is a moral issue, but he has shown us it is an economic issue. We 
are the wealthiest Nation on the planet Earth, and of the top 41 
countries, we are at 38 in poor kids. What he pointed out is that 
poverty costs all of us. It is a deep, self-inflicted wound in this 
society, because poverty costs this Nation over $1 trillion as measured 
by economists.
  But I would state that economists don't measure all the things that 
are important. Our GDP does not reflect well-being. It doesn't reflect 
how many antidepressants people take or how many child deaths there 
are. But the truth of our economy is that every dollar that we invest 
in getting children out of poverty returns $8 to this economy. So it is 
an economic issue, clearly.
  It is a globally competitive issue because in a global, knowledge-
based society, the Nation whose children learn the most will earn the 
most and will outcompete.
  It is a national security issue as we go up against countries like 
China, whose top 10 percent of their graduating high school classes 
outnumber all the children we have, virtually.
  But it is a moral issue most of all. If we are going to create a more 
beloved community, how do we treat our children?
  Children who live in poverty literally have physical effects. Poverty 
is violence. Study after study shows that the brain development of 
children in poverty is inhibited, literally--the stress hormones, the 
cortisol. It is akin to an adult having a traffic accident every single 
day. It is an indicator of childhood trauma.
  Poverty is a moral obscenity, and we, the richest Nation on the 
planet, where, year after year, our rich are getting richer, our 
children are getting poorer--who are we when we pledge allegiance to a 
flag and say ``liberty and justice for all''? Who are we?
  We don't even know the demographic changes in our country. We have 
cities across America where 1 out of every 10 children is being raised 
by a grandparent. So here we are discussing childhood poverty, and some 
people are talking about work requirements, when we know from the data, 
from conservative think tanks to what we see in other nations like 
Canada, that things like the child allowance--or in our country, the 
child tax credit--increase workforce participation. But if you get rid 
of the child tax credit, those grandparents raising grandchildren--half 
of them--plunge back into poverty.
  The stories are profound.
  We heard from my colleague from Colorado. We know families in New 
Jersey, like a woman I just saw named Margarita. She used her child tax 
credit payments for exactly what so many said they would be used for. 
She used them for food for her children, for school supplies, to keep 
the electricity running in her house. We have heard

[[Page S6612]]

stories that they are used for a car bill to get people to work. They 
are used to pay for childcare that they need for their families so that 
they can work. Families are not using this money so they could quit 
their jobs. Quite the contrary, they are using them so they can get to 
work.

  We are a nation in crisis because of how we treat our children. The 
child tax credit is a lifeline for the millions of grandparents raising 
grandchildren. It is a lifeline for low-income children.
  So you heard from Senator Bennet. We are at an inflection point. What 
will we do right now? Will we extend the child tax credit? Will we make 
the full refundability permanent? Will we keep people having these 
monthly checks? That is a policy question. But the question before us 
really is a moral one. For once and for all, this is not partisan. It 
is a defining moment for the character of our country, and I say words 
are not enough.
  We should show the child tax credit--the truth in our policies and 
what we do with our budgets. We should show our love through what we 
do, not what we say. And the best leading indicator of that will always 
be how the most vulnerable in our society are doing, how we take care 
of our elderly, and, in this case, how we care for our children.
  I am honored now to have come to the floor our Senator from Georgia. 
I would remark that as much as I love the Senator from Ohio and the 
Senator from Colorado, the Senator from Georgia has a much better 
haircut.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Booker, and I join my 
friend Senator Warnock here to talk about this. Thanks to Senator 
Bennet, Senator Booker, and Senator Warnock for their leadership on 
what I think is the most important thing I have done in my years in 
public office: the child tax credit that Senator Bennet and I began on 
years and years and years ago, joined by other colleagues. Senator 
Warnock has really taken it over in a big way this year in getting it 
across the finish line. Sorry for the sports metaphor, but that is how 
important this is.
  Senator Bennet said something about--and I guess Senator Booker--that 
raising children is work. At least one of my colleagues--a number of my 
colleagues on that side of the aisle, and I believe a colleague or two 
on this side of the aisle, said something about a work requirement in a 
child tax credit. And I don't understand that because I spent a lot of 
time, including this weekend, with my grandchildren, and I see how hard 
my daughters work raising children and our son works raising children 
and the pressures. And this bill, cutting everything else away, 
relieves some of the anxiety that parents face, the anxiety of how do I 
get the money together to pay the rent this week, before the end of the 
month, so I don't get evicted or I don't get behind in my rent--just 
the opportunities for these parents.
  So I want to talk directly--directly--to Ohio parents. We talk about 
parents and about the child tax credit. I want to talk to Ohio parents 
for a moment.
  Parents, check your bank accounts. A week ago today, we once again 
put money directly in the pockets of the families of most Ohio parents. 
The families of 92 percent of Ohio children are getting these dollars 
either direct deposit in their accounts or in their mailboxes in 
checks. It started July 15, then August 15, and then September 15. It 
will continue. Our goal on the floor today is to make this permanent; 
at least to make sure this goes beyond the end of the year. We are 
going to succeed in doing that. It is so important that we do.
  Back to talking to parents. We know how hard you work at your jobs 
and raising your kids. Any parent knows how much work it is to take 
care of children, especially young children. It has only gotten harder 
over the last year and a half. The pressures are greater. The anxiety 
placed on families is more.
  We have not recognized in this country often enough that raising 
children is work. If you have a job outside the home, you are probably 
not getting paid what you are worth. We have seen what has happened 
over the past few decades.
  Productivity has gone up. Stock prices have soared. Executive 
compensation is stratospheric. The wages have been flat. Wages for most 
Americans have barely budged; meanwhile, you all as parents know how 
expensive it is to raise kids--childcare, healthcare, school lunches, 
diapers, clothes, school supplies, braces, sports fees. The list never 
seems to end. That is not to mention trying to put money away--just a 
few dollars a month--trying to put money away for college or sending 
your kid to camp or maybe--maybe, as I have heard from some parents--
for the first time in 2 or 3 years, they are going to get to take a 
little vacation for a few days or maybe, once a month, going out to 
dinner at the local diner.
  You feel like you can't keep up no matter how hard you work. It is 
why we passed the child tax credit. It is why we started, several years 
ago, working to get other Senators on board until we had virtually, 
literally, every Senator on this side of the aisle. Every single 
Democrat has voted for the child tax credit twice already.
  Unfortunately, every single Republican voted against it. I don't even 
really understand why they are against it when, you know, you could 
look out down the aisle here, you can look down the hall, and Senator 
McConnell's office is down the hall, and you see the lobbyists lining 
up there. They always get their tax cuts.
  A train carrying tax cuts leaves the station whenever Republicans are 
in power--a tax cut for wealthy people--but this is a tax cut for 
working families, and we know how important that is. It is finally--
finally--to America's parents, making your hard work pay off so you can 
keep up with those extra expenses that keep coming and coming and 
coming when you are raising a family.
  Stories have poured into our office from parents across Ohio about 
these tax cuts. Let me just give you snippets of several of them.
  Katie in Akron: It helps pay for school supplies.
  Caitlin: It pays for preschool for my son.
  Lindsay: It is back-to-school clothes.
  Fern: It will pay for preschool for both of my children, and the rest 
is going into a savings account for them.
  From Melissa: I used part of it to buy school uniform pieces for my 
4-year-old.

  Jennifer: Put it away for college tuition.
  Maia: Food and school supplies.
  And one of the most common stories we hear over and over is that 
parents are using this to afford childcare so they can go back to work 
or keep working or work a few more hours.
  One mother from Minford in Southern Ohio near Portsmouth, wrote to 
me, and she said:

       My husband and I are middle class, raising two children 
     [both] under 6. . . . We have been worried about the 
     financial burden of paying for 2 children in full-time child 
     care.
       The $300, per child, will be placed directly towards child 
     care so . . . we [don't] have to worry about how my 
     participation in the workforce affects us, and allow us to 
     participate more in the economy.

  She continued:

       I believe these payments will allow more parents, 
     especially mothers, to participate more fully in the 
     workforce, [allowing] them more time to pursue training, and 
     help American families [get] food on the table. From the 
     bottom of my heart, thank you.

  She really tells the story. You know in Connecticut and in Georgia 
that not everybody has gone back to work that could find work; in part, 
because employers are finally starting to pay more, but so much of the 
time because they can't find childcare or they can't afford childcare. 
We know that. That is what these tax cuts are all about.
  They are about the dignity of work. All work has dignity, whether you 
punch a clock or swipe a badge, whether you work on a salary or work 
for tips, whether you are raising children, or whether you are caring 
for aging parents. Raising children is work. Raising children is work. 
It is a hell of a lot more work than moving money from one overseas 
bank account to another or checking the balance in your stock 
portfolio.
  That didn't stop Senator McConnell and the Republican majority 2 or 3 
years ago from rewarding the CEOs and hedge fund managers and Swiss 
bank account holders. We all remember what happened. Mitch McConnell--
and the lobbyists lining up down the hall--and

[[Page S6613]]

the politicians who always do their bidding passed their tax cut for 
the wealthy and corporations that outsource jobs. You know what they 
promised? They promised it would all trickle down and have more jobs 
and workers in Savannah--the hometown of the Senator from Georgia--that 
there will be more jobs and the workers would get more pay and the 
companies would invest more in the workforce.
  Well, it didn't exactly happen that way. They kept their money for 
themselves. They spent that money on stock buybacks. Unsurprisingly, 
where did that money go? It goes in the pockets, mostly, of executives.
  Now, this year, without a single vote from Republicans in Congress, 
we passed tax cuts for everyone else. It is a pretty simple contrast.
  Whose side are you on? Do you want tax cuts for billionaires and 
corporations--that is what they did 4 years ago; that is what the 
President and the Congress did 4 years ago--or do you want tax cuts for 
working families? That is what Senator Warnock's and Senator Ossoff's 
and President Biden's elections meant in November and January of this 
year; that instead of more tax cuts for the richest people in the 
country--though that bill, 70 percent of the tax cuts or the benefits 
went to the richest 1 percent--now we are seeing our tax cut goes to 90 
percent of the families in this country.
  Every single month we are showing parents and workers we are on your 
side. We will not stop fighting to make sure parents' hard work pays 
off for years to come.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. WARNOCK. Mr. President, I first want to say thank you to Senators 
Brown, Bennet, and Booker for keeping a spotlight on this issue. I must 
admit, however, on this issue, when I say Senators Brown, Bennet, and 
Booker, I think about the multiple choice questionnaires we got in 
school, and I am wondering how a guy with a last name ``Warnock'' got 
to be a part of this effort, but I am grateful.
  I want to get right to the point. There are many reasons to move this 
Build Back Better American package forward. We have to build back 
better. We have a historic opportunity to make landmark investments 
that will strengthen our families, our economy, our care 
infrastructure, including expanding Medicaid benefits to more than 4 
million Americans. We have got 600,000 Georgians in the Medicaid gap. 
We have got to provide critical debt relief for small farmers who have 
taken a financial hit during the pandemic. All of these things are 
covered in this Build Back Better agenda.
  But the other top priority of mine, and why we are all here today, is 
that we have a chance to extend the expanded child tax credit. We have 
already seen it making a difference in the lives of over 2.2 million 
children just in Georgia alone.
  I want to be clear about who this tax cut helps because people who 
have no vision engage in division, and sometimes when we are discussing 
these policies, we need to slow down and make sure folk know exactly 
whom we are talking about.
  Ninety-seven percent--97 percent--of American families with children 
would benefit from this tax cut. After we passed the American Rescue 
Plan, we significantly expanded the child tax credit and the earned 
income tax credit.
  To put more money in the pockets of working families, I remember that 
Senator Booker--actually, Senator Bennet called me from his car. He was 
on his way back home. I had just gotten elected, and just a few short 
months after I got elected, we passed the American Rescue Plan because 
we won the majority and were able to do this. Senator Brown said to me: 
Raphael, this is one of the best days of my career because we were able 
to pass the American Rescue Plan with all of these amazing provisions, 
and this provision alone is transformational. Experts have said that 
this investment that we made earlier this year would cut child poverty 
in half nationwide. Think about that. One provision. Just giving 
ordinary people, hard-working families, a break cuts child poverty in 
half. This is good public policy.
  But I will tell you what would be bad public policy. It is bad public 
policy to cut child poverty in half one year and then go back the very 
next year and double child poverty. That is poor public policy. It is 
not right, and it is not smart.

  The expanded child tax credit is helping Georgians. And do you want 
to know how I know that? I know because, as I am moving across the 
State, they are telling me. And it is no surprise, when you put an 
extra $200 or $300 in the bank account of ordinary people, working 
people, it makes a huge difference.
  In my regular travels around the State, Georgians have told me how 
this tax cut for working families has made a difference in their lives, 
made their lives just a little bit easier, especially at the start of a 
new school year.
  A few weeks ago, I was down in Columbus, GA, and I met with some of 
the hard-working families who receive this tax cut. And as I stand 
here, I think about Dante and Alicia, a couple I met down in Columbus, 
GA. Their daughter's name is London. And I asked them: What are you 
going to do with this monthly payment?
  And they said it will help cover the costs of school clothes and 
brain-building extracurricular activities. They have a very active 
young daughter, very bright, London. She came to the meeting. And they 
said that: We wouldn't be able to afford these extracurricular 
activities, but this extra support, just this little lift, has made a 
difference in our personal economy, and it has made a difference for 
London.
  I talked to Will, who works as a local hairdresser, and the monthly 
payment helps his 12-year-old daughter participate in karate 
tournaments, a development opportunity that family would not otherwise 
be able to afford.
  In another conversation, I asked a Georgia mom of two young, growing 
boys: Where would this tax cut go?
  I said: What are you going to do with this tax cut?
  Do you know what she said to me?
  She said: I am going to buy food and shoes.
  You know, when you give ordinary folk a break, when you give them an 
extra $200 or $300 a month, you know, they go and buy extravagant 
things, like food and shoes and a coat for their kid.
  They invest in extracurricular activities because they want to see 
their children do a little bit better than they did. And when they 
invest in their children, in a real sense, they invest in all of our 
children.
  When you give folk who already have everything they need and then 
some, you give them that money, they hold on to that money. But when 
you give money to ordinary folks, they put that money right back into 
our local economies and into our small businesses.
  Often the right thing to do is also the smart thing to do. It creates 
jobs, helps all of us. And so the expanded child tax credit grows and 
bolsters our economy from the bottom up.
  I agree with Senator Brown. I am just old enough to remember when 
folks were talking about trickle-down economics. And as a pastor, I 
have worked and conducted my ministry in these communities that have 
been hearing folks talk about trickle down for the last 40 years. The 
way to grow an economy is from the bottom up. The right thing to do is 
the smart thing to do.
  The expanded child tax credit is changing lives right now, and we 
have a chance in this economic package we are working on to secure this 
investment for working Georgians and Americans into the future, and 
that is why I believe we should make it permanent, and I will keep 
advocating for that. But extending this critical tax cut right now is 
the right thing to do for working families. We ought to do it. We ought 
not just talk about it; we ought to do it.
  The Scripture says, He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And 
what does the Lord require . . . but that you do justice, love 
kindness, and walk humbly with your God.
  I see the face of God in the faces of our children.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Smith). The Senator from Texas.