By Ethen Kim Lieser
Could More Stimulus Checks Be Coming? Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Some Families Can’t Even Eat Without This Stimulus Check: For about thirty-six million US families, the enhanced child tax credit—considered in some circles to be an unofficial version of the fourth stimulus check—has indeed been a lifesaver, helping them pay for groceries, school supplies, and rent or the mortgage.
From this past July to December, the federal government, directed under President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, provided eligible parents as much as $3,600 for a child under the age of six and up to $3,000 for children between ages six and seventeen. Broken down, this all means that a $250 or a $300 payment for each child was direct deposited to parents each month.
Stimulus Check: Poverty in Focus
However, with the entrance of the new year, these enhanced credits have come to a screeching halt, leaving millions of desperate parents to fend for themselves amid the Omicron coronavirus surge and red-hot inflationary environment.
Sponsored Content
“The CTC went away, but grocery prices haven’t gone down,” Stormy Johnson, a single mother of three in Kingwood, West Virginia, told CBS News.
“Now that I don’t have that payment, the reality of life is that there will be times I won’t eat to make sure my kids can,” she continued.
Johnson noted that the $500 in credits she received for her two youngest children “was a huge help.” The other child, a twenty-one-year-old, is considered too old to be eligible for the credits.
“That payment they are taking away just put a lot hurting on a lot of folks,” she concluded.
Stimulus Check Case for BBB Act
There is, however, a way for the enhanced credits to roll out to American families once again—it needs the passage of the Build Back Better Act, which would tack on another year of the monthly payments. If the bill had been approved, families would be in line to receive another round of payment on January 14.
It is certainly possible that Congress could eventually approve the legislation or a standalone bill that would retroactively enhance the child tax credit for all of 2022. But to pass any bill, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin would have to be on board. That’s not considered an easy task as he has repeatedly stated that he will not support an extension of the enhanced credit if there is no work requirement for parents.
Without any movement on the Build Back Better bill, it is likely that the nation’s lowest-income children would suffer the most. According to a survey conducted by ParentsTogether Action, it revealed that due to the ending of the enhanced credits, 50 percent of respondents said that it will be more difficult for them to meet their family’s basic needs and 36 percent admitted that they will no longer be able to meet their family’s basic needs.
A separate analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has sounded the alarm that nearly ten million children could potentially fall back into poverty without an extension of the credits. “The enhanced tax credit has enabled parents across the country to pay for food, clothing, housing, and other basic necessities and is expected to lower the number of children experiencing poverty by more than 40 percent as compared to child poverty levels in the absence of the expansion,” the organization says.
Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.
Some Families Can’t Even Eat Without This Stimulus Check: For about thirty-six million US families, the enhanced child tax credit—considered in some circles to be an unofficial version of the fourth stimulus check—has indeed been a lifesaver, helping them pay for groceries, school supplies, and rent or the mortgage.
From this past July to December, the federal government, directed under President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, provided eligible parents as much as $3,600 for a child under the age of six and up to $3,000 for children between ages six and seventeen. Broken down, this all means that a $250 or a $300 payment for each child was direct deposited to parents each month.
Stimulus Check: Poverty in Focus
However, with the entrance of the new year, these enhanced credits have come to a screeching halt, leaving millions of desperate parents to fend for themselves amid the Omicron coronavirus surge and red-hot inflationary environment.
Sponsored Content
“The CTC went away, but grocery prices haven’t gone down,” Stormy Johnson, a single mother of three in Kingwood, West Virginia, told CBS News.
“Now that I don’t have that payment, the reality of life is that there will be times I won’t eat to make sure my kids can,” she continued.
Johnson noted that the $500 in credits she received for her two youngest children “was a huge help.” The other child, a twenty-one-year-old, is considered too old to be eligible for the credits.
“That payment they are taking away just put a lot hurting on a lot of folks,” she concluded.
Stimulus Check Case for BBB Act
There is, however, a way for the enhanced credits to roll out to American families once again—it needs the passage of the Build Back Better Act, which would tack on another year of the monthly payments. If the bill had been approved, families would be in line to receive another round of payment on January 14.
It is certainly possible that Congress could eventually approve the legislation or a standalone bill that would retroactively enhance the child tax credit for all of 2022. But to pass any bill, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin would have to be on board. That’s not considered an easy task as he has repeatedly stated that he will not support an extension of the enhanced credit if there is no work requirement for parents.
Without any movement on the Build Back Better bill, it is likely that the nation’s lowest-income children would suffer the most. According to a survey conducted by ParentsTogether Action, it revealed that due to the ending of the enhanced credits, 50 percent of respondents said that it will be more difficult for them to meet their family’s basic needs and 36 percent admitted that they will no longer be able to meet their family’s basic needs.
A separate analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has sounded the alarm that nearly ten million children could potentially fall back into poverty without an extension of the credits. “The enhanced tax credit has enabled parents across the country to pay for food, clothing, housing, and other basic necessities and is expected to lower the number of children experiencing poverty by more than 40 percent as compared to child poverty levels in the absence of the expansion,” the organization says.
Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.
The Stimulus Check Americans Want:
How The Child Tax Credit Might Be Saved
By Stephen Silver
By Stephen Silver
Image of US Currency. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
A New ‘Stimulus Check’? How the Child Tax Credit Could Come Back from the Dead: This month, American families will not receive a child tax credit payment, which they got each month between July and December of 2021.
A New ‘Stimulus Check’? How the Child Tax Credit Could Come Back from the Dead: This month, American families will not receive a child tax credit payment, which they got each month between July and December of 2021.
Those payments were the result of the American Rescue Plan Act, which was signed into law last March by President Joe Biden. However, that law only mandated the child tax credit payments for the year 2021.
Child Tax Credit State of Play: A Stimulus Check Reboot?
The White House had hoped to extend the payments into the future, at one point even proposing that they continue through 2025, while some in Congress pushed for the tax credit to become permanent. The version of the president’s Build Back Better that passed the House last year included a one-year extension of the credit, but Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced in December that he opposed that version of the bill, and has been specifically skeptical about any legislation that extends the child tax credit without a work requirement.
That seemingly left the legislation, and the credit, in limbo as the calendar turned to 2022. And while Sen. Manchin indicated this week, per Axios, that he was willing to return to talks, the senator also has reportedly stated that he favors either eliminating the tax credit, or “dramatically [lowering] the income caps for eligible families.”
Tax Credit Not Dead? A Stimulus Check Compromise?
Meanwhile, this week Politico reported on what the Democrats might do to try to keep the 2021 version of the child tax credit alive.
The site suggested that Manchin and the other Democrats could pursue a compromise that still entails a work requirement, but lowers it from what Manchin would prefer. One potential idea would be to require recipients to “prove they’ve worked in the recent past.”
Another potential point of compromise, the story said, is to no longer allow wealthier families to receive the credit. However, doing so would risk violating the president’s pledge to not raise taxes on those with incomes lower than $400,000.
There is, the Politico story noted, still a child tax credit, it just has reverted to how it was prior to the passage of the American Rescue Plan, and no longer entails monthly direct payments.
Even if the credit did survive, lawmakers would likely have to subtract other things from the agenda to get its cost under a certain threshold where Manchin would be willing to vote for it, the story added.
Families Need this Stimulus Check
CBS News this week talked to some of the families who were counting on the child tax credit money arriving in January but will not receive it. Rising inflation, especially with grocery prices, has made things especially harder for such families. CBS also quoted a recent study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), which found that “about 10 million children are at risk of slipping into poverty” without the payments.
Stephen Silver is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
Child Tax Credit State of Play: A Stimulus Check Reboot?
The White House had hoped to extend the payments into the future, at one point even proposing that they continue through 2025, while some in Congress pushed for the tax credit to become permanent. The version of the president’s Build Back Better that passed the House last year included a one-year extension of the credit, but Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced in December that he opposed that version of the bill, and has been specifically skeptical about any legislation that extends the child tax credit without a work requirement.
That seemingly left the legislation, and the credit, in limbo as the calendar turned to 2022. And while Sen. Manchin indicated this week, per Axios, that he was willing to return to talks, the senator also has reportedly stated that he favors either eliminating the tax credit, or “dramatically [lowering] the income caps for eligible families.”
Tax Credit Not Dead? A Stimulus Check Compromise?
Meanwhile, this week Politico reported on what the Democrats might do to try to keep the 2021 version of the child tax credit alive.
The site suggested that Manchin and the other Democrats could pursue a compromise that still entails a work requirement, but lowers it from what Manchin would prefer. One potential idea would be to require recipients to “prove they’ve worked in the recent past.”
Another potential point of compromise, the story said, is to no longer allow wealthier families to receive the credit. However, doing so would risk violating the president’s pledge to not raise taxes on those with incomes lower than $400,000.
There is, the Politico story noted, still a child tax credit, it just has reverted to how it was prior to the passage of the American Rescue Plan, and no longer entails monthly direct payments.
Even if the credit did survive, lawmakers would likely have to subtract other things from the agenda to get its cost under a certain threshold where Manchin would be willing to vote for it, the story added.
Families Need this Stimulus Check
CBS News this week talked to some of the families who were counting on the child tax credit money arriving in January but will not receive it. Rising inflation, especially with grocery prices, has made things especially harder for such families. CBS also quoted a recent study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), which found that “about 10 million children are at risk of slipping into poverty” without the payments.
Stephen Silver is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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