Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet wishes Biden made expanded child tax credit a bigger priority: ‘We do need presidential leadership on something like this’

“That is not a criticism, but an open invitation for the president’s leadership,” added Bennet, a longtime proponent of expanding the child tax credit.

The American Rescue Plan temporarily boosted the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,600 for qualifying kids younger than 6, and $3,000 for children ages 6 to 17. Half of that benefit was distributed via monthly payments from July through December of 2021, with parents receiving $250 or $300 per child automatically.

Research from the U.S. Census Bureau found the expansion alone managed to lift 2.1 million children above the poverty line, and some researchers and advocates marveled at what they saw as a clear solution to help impoverished kids and their families.

Still, the expanded child tax credit had its skeptics. Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat whose lack of support helped sink the Biden administration’s Build Back Better agenda in December 2021, did not want to extend the child tax credit without first implementing a work requirement, and he had also brought up the possibility of an income limit. (Women with an unemployed spouse and eligible child saw a dramatic increase in employment after the child tax credit’s expansion, Bennet noted Wednesday, citing research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.)

Bennet said it’s “clear to me” that the expanded credit didn’t disincentivize people from working, noting that some parents in Colorado bought extra child care with the money, enabling them to work more. Families additionally spent the money on rent, school clothes and other needs, he said.

“I can tell you for the people that got the credit, it is enormously popular and enormously powerful,” Bennet said. “People in my state, as I said earlier, they spent it on all kinds of things — but if you talk to moms in particular that benefited from this, whose kids benefited from it, they’ll tell you a zillion different things they spent it on. But the one thing they say in common is, ‘You cannot imagine the stress that was relieved from my family not having to deal with this stuff at the end of the month.’”

The senator otherwise praised President Joe Biden’s legislative accomplishments on the Inflation Reduction Act, the bipartisan infrastructure law and the CHIPS and Science Act, all of which he described as a “departure from the trickle-down, supply-side economics that we’ve seen basically since Ronald Reagan was our president.”

“I celebrate that,” Bennet said. “I’m grateful for that.”

Biden called for restoring the expanded child tax credit during his State of the Union address in February. Bennet and a group of Democratic colleagues, meanwhile, mounted an unsuccessful push late last year to include the expanded child tax credit in the year-end federal spending package by withholding their support for a corporate tax break.

“I think there’s common ground ahead,” Bennet said. “Those of us that have been advocates for this I think need to own the fact that we didn’t make it permanent —and we’ve got to figure out how to do our job better. But the more that we can connect this to the real lives of American citizens, I think the more likely it is that we’re going to be able to get bipartisan agreement.”

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