- Democrats like President Biden are boasting that they lifted millions of children from poverty.
- The reality is complicated, because the program that achieved this expired, erasing most gains.
- The extended child tax credit faces a tough road to renewal in the Senate.
Democrats deliver.
That's the party's newest message to voters as the November midterm elections approach. But there's a big catch for the Democratic leaders who are touting one of their most significant economic accomplishments during the Biden era via a particular talking point that's coming up over and over again.
The American Rescue Plan resulted in "children out of poverty," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday. "People out of poverty, we've done a great job."
"Poverty for all children, including Black children, Hispanic children, were at the lowest levels ever recorded in our first year," President Joe Biden told members of the Democratic National Committee at a winter meeting on March 10.
"The Child Tax Credit cut childhood poverty for the children. The children. Latino children, Black children, poor children, Appalachian children, by 40%," Vice President Kamala Harris told the same body on March 12.
That big catch? The policy that Democrats keep boasting about to pull off this feat actually expired late last year, plunging millions of children around the country back into poverty.
It's unclear if Congress will renew the tax credit before the November midterms, undercutting Democrats' ability to run on its brief success at denting child poverty when research from Columbia University, using federal data, shows it's already shot back up.
Biden's stimulus package enacted just weeks into his presidency in early March 2021 included a one-year expansion of the child tax credit. It boosted the amount from $2,000 to $3,000 or $3,600 per kid depending on their age, and turned it into a monthly check program that reached the poorest families with no taxable income for the first time. But the expansion has since expired.
It's hard for Democrats to celebrate a program that one of their key senators opposes
Democrats say the measure lifted millions of children out of poverty on their watch. And the facts back them up; in December, the sixth round of monthly checks from the tax credit kept 3.7 million children out of poverty, according to Columbia University's Center on Poverty and Social Policy.
But the positive impacts were already backsliding only a month after its expiration. Early research indicated the child poverty rate in January jumped right back to 2020 levels, essentially wiping out most of the gains made under the program.
Families spent the extended child tax credit on basic necessities and investing in their children's education, said Leah Hamilton, a faculty affiliate at the Social Policy Institute at the Washington University in St. Louis.
Some Democratic aides privately acknowledged the difficulty of touting the benefits of a program that expired under their watch. And they blame one of their own for the problem.
"It limits your ability to talk about it for sure," one House Democratic aide granted anonymity to speak candidly told Insider. "It would be one thing if we did this, and Republicans prevented us from continuing it. But the face of blocking it, it's Joe Manchin."
Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia played a pivotal role sinking the House-approved Build Back Better plan in part due to his opposition to the child benefit late last year.
He argued the program was too expensive and it could dissuade parents from working.
In his State of the Union address on March 1, Biden called on Congress to "extend the child tax credit, so no one has to raise a family in poverty."
There's few signs that the program will be revived anytime soon. The White House hasn't restarted formal negotiations with Manchin on a slimmer version of their social and climate bill and at least one senior Democrat told Insider that it may not pass this year.
"We can all agree that the child tax credit is a historic tax cut for middle class families and the key driver behind the American Rescue Plan cutting child poverty to the lowest level on record," a White House official told Insider.
The official said they're focused on ensuring that families receive the second half of the benefit which will be provided as a lump sum after families either file their taxes or sign up for the payment in an online portal.
Congress is currently consumed with devising the American response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a Supreme Court nomination, and kicking off negotiations on a bill meant to strengthen domestic semiconductor production.
Democrats are trying to sell a vision of success to voters
Americans face rising prices just about everywhere they turn at grocery stores or at the gas pump. But renewing some version of the child benefit isn't high up on the Democratic to-do list right now.
Yet as the midterm election looms, Democrats are trying to convince voters their economic programs — mainly the stimulus and infrastructure laws — will improve their lives.
Left-leaning policy experts credited Democrats for talking up a program that accomplished its mission — at least for a time.
"The child tax credit obviously reduced poverty and hunger in America," Felicia Wong, president of the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute, said in an interview. "That's absolutely something Democrats need to say."
"I get the conundrum for people who are running, but it is important to remind people that government can do big things," Wong said.
Some Democrats sought to blame Republicans for stymieing the Extended Child Tax Credit's renewal, as the vast majority of GOP lawmakers are opposed to providing checks with no strings attached. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell once derided it as a "monthly welfare deposit."
"It's gonna be really hard because Republicans are dug in, and they think they gain politically from this," Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, told Insider on Thursday.
Other Democrats in competitive races seem like they're willing to tie at least some of their political fortunes to the expired program. One senator said he had no problem touting the expanded child tax credit's successes in the midterms.
"It hasn't been extended. We got to keep fighting to do it. So I guess I'm not sure I see it as a contradiction," Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, an architect of the expansion, told Insider. "But I do see it as a failure of Washington DC to deliver for working families at a time when they need help more than ever."