Democratic lawmakers scolded Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, for proposing an expanded child tax credit just days after missing a vote on a similar plan.
On CBS’s Face the Nation August 11, Vance called for a “broad-based" child tax credit of $5,000 per child without specifying whether it would include an income threshold. He said the subsidy would be implemented in a way that would consider unique family circumstances.
“I grew up in a poor family where the child care was my grandparents. . .I want us to have a child care policy that’s good for all families, not just a particular model of family,” Vance said on the program.
Congressional Democrats pointed out that Vance skipped a recent vote on a tax package that included an expansion of the child tax credit. Senate Republicans quashed the $79 billion tax package, which the House overwhelmingly passed six months earlier.
“If JD Vance sincerely gave a whit about working families in America, he would have shown up in the Senate a week and a half ago and voted for my proposal to expand the child tax credit and help 16 million low-income kids get ahead. He didn’t even care enough to use his platform to call on his Senate Republican colleagues to support it,” Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in a statement.
Rep. Suzan K. DelBene, D-Wash., said Vance’s stance on an expanded child tax credit “flies in the face of reality.”
“Just this month, Senate Republicans banded together to kill modest but important improvements to the credit negotiated by members of their own party that passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support,” DelBene said in a statement. “We need to be clear about who is preventing those resources from reaching hardworking Americans.”
Vance said on Face the Nation that even if he had been present at the Senate vote, the measure would have failed as the bill did not have a realistic chance of getting the required 60 votes.
The child tax credit was briefly expanded to up to $3,600 annually per child under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021; Democrats and the Biden administration have linked that measure to a significant drop in child poverty.
While Republicans have shown signs of support for a permanent increase to the subsidy, they have argued it shouldn’t be constructed in a way that discourages work.