Centennial State News

Washington, D.C. — On July 13, Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, Chair of the Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight, released his opening statement ahead of the subcommittee’s hearing titled, “Assessing 25 Years of the Child Tax Credit (1997-2022).” This is the subcommittee’s first hearing this Congress.

The Child Tax Credit was first created as a part of the 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act, and has been expanded several times with bipartisan support. Bennet authored the 2021 expansion of the Child Tax Credit, which reached 62 million children and helped cut poverty by half. During the hearing, the subcommittee will hear from University of Michigan Associate Professor Katherine Michelmore, Ph.D., Center for Law and Social Policy President & Executive Director Indivar Dutta-Gupta, American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of the Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility Kevin Corinth, Ph.D., and American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow and Rowe Scholar Angela Rachidi, Ph.D.

Bennet’s full remarks as prepared are available below.

Good morning. I am pleased to call this Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight to order.

I want to thank Ranking Member Thune for his partnership on this hearing, along with all of our colleagues who join us.

Today, we’re here to discuss the 25-year-old Child Tax Credit, and its benefit to tens of millions of American children. Over its history, this tax credit – which is the single largest federal expenditure for kids – has made it easier for families to afford rent, groceries, child care, and the thousand other expenses that come with raising a child in America. 

At its best, the Child Tax Credit has lifted nearly 2 million children out of poverty and demonstrated that we don’t have to accept, in the wealthiest country in the world, one of the highest levels of  childhood poverty in the industrialized world as a permanent feature of our economy or our democracy.

In today’s testimony we will learn much more about the history of the child tax credit and its success. 

And, although there have been occasional differences in approach, I think it is important to recognize that the child tax credit has been expanded – both in size and to whom it's available – as a result of bipartisan consensus and agreement.

Indeed, I want to record here that among the first lawmakers to officially embrace the CTC were Republican members of the House in 1994, who included a $500 credit in Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America.” 

And it was President George W. Bush who worked with both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, to make some of the Child Tax Credit refundable for the first time, expanding some of the benefit to low-income families. 

In 2017, Congress passed the Trump Tax Cuts without bipartisan support. 

That bill doubled the maximum size of the credit from $1,000 to $2,000, but it also made it more available to wealthier families by increasing the income threshold to $200,000 for individuals and $400,000 for married couples. 

Around the same time, my colleague Sherrod Brown and I took a different approach and introduced the American Family Act. 

That bill made the Child Tax Credit fully refundable, cutting taxes for the poorest families and the middle class.

We did that because no child chooses to be born poor, but as our witnesses will tell you today, growing up in poverty can shape a child’s future in ways that are profoundly unfair. 

I saw the effect of that poverty every day when I worked for the kids of the Denver Public Schools as their superintendent. 

And as a society, we’ve paid the price. Child poverty costs our country up to $1 trillion a year, in the form of more hospital visits, lower earnings, and higher crime. 

That’s why economists from across the political spectrum agree that investing in our kids is one of the best choices we can make as a country. 

According to Columbia University, every dollar we invest in the expanded Child Tax Credit generates $9 in benefits to society down the road. 

When COVID exacerbated and revealed further inequities in our economy, we passed the American Family Act as part of the American Rescue Plan. 

And we will hear today that, unlike many things the federal government attempts, it was an enormous success. 

As the research predicted:

62 million kids benefitted. 90% of kids in every single state.

In Colorado, moms spent it on things like groceries, diapers, and textbooks. 

It reduced stress for kids and their parents.

It helped cut child poverty in half and hunger by a quarter.

And we found out that an extra $10 a day didn’t actually reduce workforce participation as some suggested it would.

There is a growing chorus of research, some of which our witnesses will share today, that shows the expanded child tax credit is pro-family, pro-work, and pro-democracy. 

For six shining months in 2021, we finally treated children in poverty like they are our children - not someone else’s. 

But we failed to extend the expanded child tax credit, and now, because of that failure, child poverty is rising again in America. And American children continue to go to bed hungry.

Today, I hope we’ll have a discussion about why we should move forward in a bipartisan way to make the full, expanded credit available to every kid in America. 

We should consider how extraordinary it would be for the wealthiest nation in human history – with the fourth highest rate of childhood poverty among rich nations – to end child poverty. 

To have an economy that when it grows, it grows for everybody, not just the people at the very top. 

And my hope is in the months ahead, we will build on 25 years of Child Tax Credit expansions to support America’s children.

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