Carlos Duran and his wife, Libia, two years ago arrived at a motel in Amarillo, Texas, booked on Expedia. Their room featured browning bathroom tiles and a television with no signal. They went downstairs to get a refund and find another hotel. Behind the woman working the front desk, something—a lap dog?—made soft noises from a pile of blankets on the floor behind the counter.
“Is that a dog?” Duran asked. The young woman told him no. It was her baby. Less than a month old.
That scrambled their plans. Instead of hightailing it to nicer accommodations, the Durans spent the next hour at Target buying a bassinet, a crib, and other baby supplies.
Duran is president of the National Hispanic Pastors Alliance, which represents thousands of churches and families. Some pastors or congregants warn him against wading into policy and politics: “They say, ‘Why is this Hispanic group involved with all these conversations and trying to push for tax reforms or policy that don’t have nothing to do with faith?’”
Duran had wrestled with those questions himself. That night, he made up his mind. He saw at ground level how some extra dollars in the pockets of families make a huge difference to parents like that woman—maybe the difference that means a new mother gets to stay home longer with her newborn or decides against an abortion.
The next day he flew to Washington, DC. “I’m representing her,” he told Christianity Today. “We might not get it right all the time, but we need to be sitting at the table.”
As Republican lawmakers weigh what to include in the promised tax-cuts package President Donald Trump campaigned on, Duran and other Christian groups hope for an inflation-cost-easing opportunity that will make it onto the floor of the House, not the cutting room. Several Republicans have put forth proposals to extend the child tax credit (CTC), usually $2,000 per child, and make it more beneficial for families. Christian groups are urging Congress to follow through.
Brian Walsh, executive director of Faith and Giving, which represents over 50 faith-based social services, educational, and humanitarian relief organizations, said their partners have seen firsthand what the CTC has meant for homeless mothers now able to send their children to school with school supplies and shoes that fit.
Currently, around 40 million taxpayers claim the CTC every year. When then-president Bill Clinton signed the CTC into law in 1997, it was for only $500 and was not refundable, so if the credit exceeded the amount taxpayers owed, they would not receive a reimbursement. The George W. Bush administration increased the CTC to $1,000.
The last time Trump was in office, Republicans increased the CTC from $1,000 to $2,000, made earners with up to $200,000 income (if single) or $400,000 income (if married) eligible, and made part of the credit refundable. A parent who pays less than the size of the credit can still receive a refund.
When the COVID-19 pandemic raged, Democrats and former president Joe Biden under the American Rescue Plan Act temporarily bumped the CTC to $3,600 per child under the age of six and $3,000 for other children under the age of 18. It also allowed lower-income families to receive more of the funds by making the credit fully refundable.
The US Census Bureau calculated that, in part due to the CTC, the child poverty rate fell to its lowest recorded levels. The Bureau estimated that child poverty, measured by the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), declined by almost half, from 9.7 percent in 2020 to 5.2 percent in 2021. The SPM measures poverty based on both pretax income and other benefits available to low-income families, such as food and housing subsidies, as well as tax credits. The official poverty measure, which does not track those additions, only slightly declined during the same time span.
A study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found in 2021 that 91 percent of families earning less than $35,000 used the child tax credit payments on basic household expenses, primarily food, clothing, shelter, and utilities. The Biden administration sent checks out monthly rather than annually.
Rev. Heather Taylor, managing director of the Christian advocacy organization Bread for the World, said expanding the tax credit could be a “critical tool” in combating food insecurity for families with children: “Ending child hunger and poverty is a goal that transcends party lines.”
The Biden-era provisions expired in at the end of 2021, dipping back to the levels Republicans set. Doing nothing on the credit this year would be tantamount to a tax hike: The CTC is set to automatically halve at the end of this year when some provisions expire in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
The CTC has also not kept pace with inflation. Since 2018, its value has fallen by 22 percent. Several proposals by both Democrats and Republicans call for the CTC to be adjusted to compensate for inflation, while others want to bump up the total amount. Missouri senator Josh Hawley says $5,000. A group of Senate Democrats released a framework to boost the credit up to $6,360 for newborns, with the number decreasing as children age.
Senate Finance Committee chairman Mike Crapo, a Republican from Idaho, told the Washington Examiner that the CTC “is a priority for the administration, it’s a priority for [Vice President] JD Vance, it’s a priority for the Senate and for many of my colleagues.” Vance spoke favorably of expanding the CTC. Trump has said he wants to continue the broader Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (that included the CTC), but he hasn’t weighed in on specifics around the CTC. Instead, he’s talked generally about wanting a “baby boom.”
Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said the proposal is a “pro-family, pro-life policy that wraps around vulnerable families in need. …[It’s] not only sound economic policy, but it also aligns with biblical values of justice and care for the least of these.”
Herbie Newell, president of the evangelical adoption agency Lifeline Children’s Services, said the CTC debate gives pro-life, pro-family groups practical ways to help families: “We need to speak up on the things that we’re for as much as for the things that we’re against,” Newell said.
Republicans are considering other tax breaks that also cost money, like cutting taxes on tips (another Trump campaign promise) or ending taxes on Social Security. The likeliest place for extending the credit is in the Republicans’ budget reconciliation package. That allows them to get around a filibuster (and the need for Democratic votes) so as to pass a package with only the GOP majority in the Senate.
Republicans have to decide whether to put pro-family policies they’ve stumped on last year into practice or to have other campaign promises and fiscal concerns overshadow the credit. “On the merits itself, the child tax credit is a pretty easy sell,” Galen Carey, vice president of government relations at the National Association for Evangelicals, said: “The fly in the ointment is that it costs money. Is pro-family [policy] something that they just give lip service to, or is it something that they really put at the top of their agenda?”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified a proposal to increase the Child and Dependent Care Credit as a Child Tax Credit proposal.
