The White House confirmed on Tuesday that President Joe Biden would like to see the child tax credit expansion, included in the most recent stimulus bill, become a permanent policy. The child allowance grants were bolstered as part of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief plan and significantly expanded the country's welfare state.
Child Tax Credit Expansion
The president and other officials in his administration are traveling throughout the US to promote and expound on the newly enacted relief measure. The package also provides $1,400 stimulus checks to most Americans.
Biden's anti-poverty plan to expand the child tax credit implies that his potential presidency would possibly mean a White House more focused on progressive economic policies than those witnessed during the tenure of Obama and Clinton. Targeted at diminishing childhood poverty rates, his proposed expansion would be dramatic. It would potentially open the allowance to families who would otherwise fail to be eligible.
According to White House chief of staff Ron Klain on Sunday, the Biden administration would make efforts to make the year-long expansion of the child tax credit permanent. Klain, a longtime Biden adviser and one of his most influential aides, stated, "Some of the policy in [the American Rescue Plan] hopefully lays a groundwork for what follows. Of course, dealing with the child poverty problem on a permanent basis is an important objective for us," reported Business Insider.
A number of experts called it an action toward universal basic income. As part of the third stimulus check, the credit was increased to $3,000 per child from six to 17 years old and $3,600 for children under six years old.
Third Stimulus Checks To Be Received Starting This Weekend
According to experts, the move will remarkably diminish child poverty in the United States. Almost 11 million, or one in seven, American children live in poverty, as estimated by the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank.
According to Seth Hanlon, special assistant for economic policy to then-President Barack Obama, "You saw in 2009, the Obama-Biden administration did an expansion of the child tax credit then, and it was an important expansion. But it was more incremental, whereas this is more transformative," reported CNBC.
Earlier this March, the president privately told House Democrats that he supported a permanent expansion of the child benefit, according to a Democratic aide. He supported a bill authored by Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington that would ensure the permanence of the $3,000-per-child checks.
The child tax credit was made refundable and payable through monthly installments of $300. Prior to this, the maximum annual credit was $2,000 per child under aged 17, reported The Epoch Times.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Schumer's fellow New York Democrat, stated on Sunday that they would push to lay down the enhanced child tax credits as they advance with other initiatives involving legislation to upgrade the United States' infrastructure. Psaki remarked Biden was reading through various proposals, including one from Republican Senator Mitt Romney, to keep providing the credits to Americans, and regarded them as critical to getting more women back into the labor force.
