Woe To You, Legislators

The failure of Congress to extend the Child Tax Credit is a moral disgrace that will harm millions of families. It's time to start naming names.

I have a poster in my home office. It has white letters over a black background that simply says in all caps: FIGHT POVERTY NOT THE POOR. I’ve been thinking about that poster a lot this week, as we have learned that the Child Tax Credit, which has done and could do more to reduce child poverty in America than any other single policy, is now DEAD on Capitol Hill. 

As numerous studies have shown, child poverty went down dramatically – almost by half – when the CTC was included in the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act. When it was not renewed a year later, child poverty soared again.

Faith leaders from across the theological and political spectrum have testified and pleaded with elected officials on both sides of the aisle that restoring the CTC would significantly reduce the poverty of our poorest children and families. We said that was a fundamental biblical and gospel imperative for us.

In May, I was one of more than two dozen prominent Christians who called on the nation’s political leaders to prioritize poor children by making the Child Tax Credit fully available to low-income families on a permanent basis. Here’s our Politico ad, which includes our letter to all 535 members of Congress and the White House. 

As we wrote in the letter, the failure of Congress to extend the expanded monthly Child Tax Credit has hurt millions of families. Child poverty increased 41% in January 2022, after the expanded credit expired. Children in families with the least financial means are hurt most. In addition, the loss of the expanded tax credit practically means that a family of four with moderate income and two children receives at least $2,600 less. 

If Congress had made the current $2,000 Child Tax Credit fully refundable and available to all low-income families, the number of children experiencing poverty would have dropped by 20 percent. This could have helped families afford things like food, shoes for their children, or decent housing.

The experience of the expanded Child Tax Credit demonstrated that Congress has the power to alleviate the hardships faced by poor children. But Congress does not have the political will to do so. The CTC is dead in the water as a part of the “reconciliation” bill to be finally decided before the August recess, according to numerous media reports.

It is clear who bears responsibility for this national disgrace, and it is time to cast blame and name names. 

Every Republican in the United States Senate has opposed legislation that included the Child Tax Credit, and all deserve blame now. All of them, a whole political party, cares nothing for our poorest children and families and would rather fight the poor than fight poverty as my poster says, using ugly slanders like “welfare queens” and claiming families use the money for drugs. There is no evidence for any of that. Those who talk that way are grossly ignorant of the realities for poor children and their families or worse. As the author and advocate Heather McGhee has pointed out, the racist roots of the “undeserving poor” myth run deep in this country.

There is also one Democratic Senator who is also deeply at fault here. Joe Manchin must share moral culpability for the failure of the Child Tax credit. Always vowing to stay at the negotiating table, but never seeming to care as much about children as corporations and his coal interests in West Virginia — that’s Joe Manchin, who has single-handedly stopped this country from making important moral, economic and political progress. What a disaster he has been. And for him to insist that people used the CTC to pay for illegal drugs — when we have clear evidence to the contrary — is inexcusable.

To the Republicans who care more about power than moral principles – shame on you! 

And to Senator Manchin, who betrayed poor children, turned a blind eye to faith leaders, and seems to love the power of having a veto in his pocket – shame on you, too. 

Biblical prophets like Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Micah issued denunciations on kings and rulers who disregarded the facts and the kids in their time. And I am with them.

I would suggest that all the Senators who stopped the Child Tax Credit read all the translations of Isaiah 10:1-2. Because this applies to you:

“Doom to you who legislate evil, who make laws that make victims–Laws that make misery for the poor, that rob my destitute people of dignity, exploiting defenseless widows, taking advantage of homeless children.”