Washington, D.C. – Today, Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet spoke on the Senate floor with U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) about the expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and the need to extend this policy in the Build Back Better Budget.
“No matter what county I’m in, people say, ‘We are killing ourselves. And no matter what we do, we can’t afford some combination of housing, health care, higher education, early childhood education — if there is any early childhood education. We can't save, we feel like our kids are going to live a more diminished life than the life we lived.’ And that is the anecdotal reflection of an economy that for 50 years, in this country, has worked really well for the top 10% of Americans and not for anybody else,” said Bennet. “And the result of that is that 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.”
“We've been told by Columbia University that we're 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,” said Bennet. “So there is every reason in the world that we should make this permanent — that we should extend it — and in my view we can't afford not to.”
He concluded: “...There have been many times when I've been on this floor and I've said that we're treating America's children like they’re someone else's children, you know. That only a country that didn't care about their kids would treat their kids the way we have. But finally, we're not. Finally we said, we're not going to tolerate this.”
Bennet has championed the expansion of the CTC for years. In March 2021, President Joe Biden signed into law a one-year expansion of the CTC, based on Bennet’s American Family Act, in the American Rescue Plan Act. This expansion has the potential to cut nationwide child poverty nearly in half this year and benefit 90% of American children.
In his American Families Plan, Biden proposed permanent full refundability of the CTC, as well as extending the enhanced CTC value and monthly payments through 2025. The president also committed to working with Congress to make the full, expanded CTC permanent. Last week, the House Ways and Means committee included in its initial draft of its portion of the Build Back Better budget bill an expansion of the Child Tax Credit through 2025, as well as made the credit fully refundable on a permanent basis. Bennet is working with his colleagues in the Senate to adopt these critical improvements.
Bennet’s full remarks as delivered are available below.
Thank you, Mr. President.
And I want to thank my colleague from Ohio, Senator Brown, for his remarkable leadership 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've been able to triple.
But I think we're here today on a really, really momentous matter. And when I think back, Mr. President, to the days I was a superintendent of schools in Denver, most of the kids in my city were kids of color, most were living in poverty, and many of their families were working two and three jobs. And no matter what they did, they couldn't get their kids out of poverty.
And today, now, I've traveled the state of Colorado, a state that has got, you know, very rural areas and very urban areas. If I had to summarize the last 10 years of my town halls — 10 or 11 years — it's very easy to do it.
No matter what county I’m in, people say, “We are killing ourselves. And no matter what we do, we can’t afford some combination of housing, health care, higher education, early childhood education — if there is any early childhood education. We can't save, we feel like our kids are going to live a more diminished life than the life we lived.”
And that is the anecdotal reflection of an economy that for 50 years in this country, has worked really well for the top 10% of Americans and not for anybody else. And the result of that is that 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.
And Senator Brown and I and Senator Booker and Senator Warnock — Senator Harris before that — came together to try to address it. And to say, 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 it by making three changes to the Child Tax Credit: to increase the amount, to 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 of childcare, they're able to do it in real time.
I'm sure my colleagues on the floor today spent time meeting with people in their states over the recess — I did.
And 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, you know, 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 had 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 you 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's what being poor in America is like — you have to pay a tax on everything. Because you can't buy a pair of decent shoes, you can't buy a decent tire for a bike.
And this is a reason why [over 400] economists have written to the administration saying we should be making this permanent. I believe we should be making it permanent. And they have also pointed out that — it's very important for people to hear — that this is pro-work.
The countries that have child allowances like this, they 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 child care so they can stay at work. They can use that allowance to pay to help fix a car so they can stay at work. This is a pro-work policy.
And just as important as that, childhood poverty costs our country a trillion dollars a year. We've been told by Columbia University that we're 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 — and in my view we can't afford not to.
And that's why we're here today. And I want to thank my colleague from New Jersey, Senator Booker — somebody I've 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.
And there have been many times when I've been on this floor and I've said that we're treating America's children like they’re someone else's children, you know. That only a country that didn't care about their kids would treat their kids the way we have.
But finally, we're not. Finally we said, we're not going to tolerate this. And a lot of that has to do with the senator from New Jersey's leadership. So, Mr. President, I would yield the floor.
