Fox News host schools Roy Blunt on the child tax credit’s ability to ‘reduce poverty’

When Republican senators appear on Fox News or Fox Business and rail against the Build Back Better Act — including the child tax credit — they can usually expect the host to agree with their talking points. Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, however, got a surprise during a December 26 appearance on “Fox News Sunday” (formerly hosted by Chris Wallace) when guest host Mike Emanuel demonstrated that the child tax credit reduces poverty.

Blunt told Emanuel, “We doubled the child tax credit just a handful of years ago, and we need to look at that if that is no longer meeting the need of moving kids out of poverty. But families that make $150,000, for instance, aren’t in poverty in Missouri. I don’t think they’re in poverty almost anywhere in the United States.”

But Emanuel had plenty of data in support of the child tax credit, telling Blunt, “According to the Urban Institute, continuing the benefit could have a significant impact on child poverty, reducing child poverty to about 8.4 percent from 14.2%, a fall of roughly 40%. Is that a compelling argument to extend it?”

Emanuel also told the Missouri Republican, “Another argument for the child tax credit is it would bolster financial security and spur economic growth in Missouri by reducing taxes on the middle class and those striving to break into it. How do you respond?”

Blunt, however, never really answered Emanuel’s question, slamming the Build Back Better Act as “Build Back Broker” and describing Democrats’ support of the child tax credit as a “gimmick.”

Although the Build Back Better Act has passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, it has been stalled in the U.S. Senate — and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, during a “Fox News Sunday” appearance on December 19, declared that he is still a “no” vote on the BBB Act. It remains to be seen whether or not President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress will be able to come up with a new, altered version of BBB that Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, another centrist Democrat and key swing vote, will agree to support — and what a new version of the bill will propose with the child tax credit.