Senator rips 'no-show' Vance for letting GOP block child tax credit expansion he now supports

16 August 2024

Former President Donald Trump is now proposing an expansion of the child tax credit as both he and Vice President Kamala Harris roll out their respective policy platforms, and Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) is running on it. But one of Vance's U.S. Senate colleagues is calling him out for failing to actually get it enacted when he had the chance.

According to Semafor reporter Joseph Zeballos-Roig, an "arms race" is now underway between the two candidates in regard to the child tax credit. During her economic speech in Raleigh, North Carolina on Friday, Harris proposed a $6,000 tax credit for parents of newborns, and making the enhanced child tax credit President Joe Biden approved during the Covid-19 pandemic permanent.

That pandemic-era expansion raised the tax credit from $2,000 to $3,600 per child, and included 17 year-olds in the covered group. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, that expanded child tax credit kept an estimated 500,000 children out of poverty across the country. Senate Republicans – with the help of Sen. Joe Manchin (I-West Virginia), who was a Democrat at the time — blocked a previous effort to prolong the higher child tax credit.

Vance, in the meantime, called for a child tax credit of $5,000 per child in a recent CBS interview, though he didn't make clear what age groups or income brackets would be included in that higher amount.

"I'd like to have a broad based family policy and a broad based Child Tax Credit," Vance said. "Again, we've talked about doing this for a long time. President Trump has been on the record for a long time supporting a bigger child tax credit, and I think you want it to apply to all American families."

However, Ohio's junior U.S. senator was notably absent when he had the chance to transform his campaign proposal into concrete legislation, as he was campaigning for Trump on the southern border. In a Friday tweet, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) reminded his followers that "JD Vance was a no-show on the vote for my bill to expand the child tax credit when it was on the senate floor two weeks ago."

"My bill failed after Republicans blocked it, leaving 16 million kids worse off," Wyden tweeted.

"There’s always a lot of talk among Republicans about supporting families, competing with China, and cracking down on fraud in government programs, but they just rejected a bill that would accomplish all of that in one package," Wyden told the AP after the bill was shot down.

While the election is still nearly three months away, one op-ed suggests Republicans are taking Democrats' policies seriously when it comes to their own families. In an essay for Newsweek, Bethany Mandel — a former Heritage Foundation writer — wrote that as a mother of six children, she's noticed that Democrats are so far the better party for parents. She specifically cited the example of Vance skipping out on the vote to expand the child tax credit.

"Just last week, Senate Republicans blocked an effort to expand child tax credits, especially those targeted at low-income Americans. [JD] Vance, a United States Senator who could have voted for child tax credits now, skipped the vote, as did a half dozen other Republican senators," she wrote.

"I'm not one to give credit to the Democratic Party on anything, but credit where credit is due," she added. "And it's going to hurt the Republican ticket, especially when it tries to paint itself as pro-family."

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