Press Releases

Today, Congresswoman Suzan DelBene (WA-01) responded to a recent American Enterprise Institute article that claims that Democrats’ efforts to bring back and make permanent the enhanced Child Tax Credit “punishes working families” and would “discourage parental employment and risk harming the long-run prospects of children.”

“The idea that permanently expanding the Child Tax Credit would harm families or discourage parents from working is untethered from reality. We don’t need to guess how the expanded Child Tax Credit would work because Democrats put this program in place in 2021 and the results couldn’t have been clearer. The expanded Child Tax Credit was one of the largest tax cuts for working families and cut childhood poverty nearly in half during some of the most challenging times of the pandemic. This is in large part because the expansion reached the one-in-three kids left behind by the existing credit.

“The consistent claim from conservatives that the expanded credit discouraged parents from working is also disproven by the data. A review of the impacts of the 2021 program clearly shows that the expanded Child Tax Credit had no significant impact on parental employment. Instead, the expanded credit empowered parents with the resources they needed to get back to work by paying for child care and other necessities of raising children.

“The pervasive use of this disproven claim aligns with Republicans’ consistent disregard for the facts. We have a proven solution in Democrats’ expanded Child Tax Credit, and we must make it permanent to give our kids the best chance at a bright future.”

Background:

• DelBene is a lead sponsor of the American Family Act, which was the basis for the one-year expansion of the Child Tax Credit in the 2021 American Rescue Plan.
• The expanded Child Tax Credit cut childhood poverty nearly in half before returning to pre-policy levels once Republicans allowed the expanded credit to expire.
• A Columbia University study showed “that real-world data in the immediate wake of the CTC expansion do not support claims that the elimination of the phase-in portion of the CTC has discouraged work among parents in any meaningful way.”