What happened to those living in poverty with the expansion of child tax credit?

PHILADELPHIA — Federal payments that kept millions of families out of poverty expired with no sign of continuation from Congress, plunging people in need back into a state of indigence that they believed they would never suffer again.

“It's silly, shortsighted and nonsense,” said Beth McConnell, policy director for the Philadelphia Office of Community Empowerment and Opportunity. "We are literally taking food out of children's mouths."

The one-year extension of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) that the Biden administration launched in July was aimed at helping families cope with the pandemic with injections of money of up to $3,000 per year for each child between the ages of 6 and 17, and $3,600 per year for each child between the ages of newborn to 5 years.

The expanded CTC has especially helped Americans living in extreme poverty. To get the credit before the expansion, households had to earn at least $2,500 a year, excluding those who didn't earn as much.

However, with Biden's plan, the CTC became openly available to all those living in poverty, regardless of income.

But now, as the omicron variant grows exponentially, that lifeline has been withdrawn, leaving poor people in dire straits without a means of survival on which they increasingly depended, say activists and low-income people.

“It's definitely a disgrace,” said Samantha Rodriguez, 28, a South Philadelphia child care worker who has a 6-year-old daughter. She had been receiving a CTC payment of $250 a month that started in July and ended last month.

“That money paid for our food,” said Rodríguez, who described herself as a single mother making less than $20 an hour. She has a master's degree in business and is enrolled in a teacher certification program. His goal is to one day open a school to help children with special needs. But Rodríguez is tied to $90,000 in student debt, making her financial survival precarious.

“Now I'll have to figure out how to eat,” said Rodríguez, who applied for a second job as a driver for Uber Eats. “I am determined not to have to go to the pantries for help.”

Expect some relief

Overall, predicts Mai Miksic, director of early childhood policy at Philadelphia-based Children First (formerly Public Citizens for Children and Youth), there will be “longer lines at food pantries and people will rely more from community programs that provide diapers and clothing.”

As terrible as life can be, in the short term there will be some relief, however small.

The CTC extension was supposed to be for 12 months. That means those who received payments between July and December 2021 are still owed another six months of money.

But there are two conditions. First, the money will be given only to people who file their 2021 income taxes this year. That could be a problem because many low-income people don't even file a return, often because they don't earn enough. Many of these people were able to register for the CTC in 2021 using a “non-filers” portal on the government website.

However, advocates say, the "non-filer" option will no longer be available and people will have to file traditional tax returns, something those in poverty would be unable to file because they don't are familiar with it or cannot afford help to do it. Fiscal services for people in poverty are available.

Second, even when people file their taxes, the CTC won't mail them monthly dues like last year. Instead, the money will arrive in a lump sum, like a tax refund after being processed by the IRS, making it more difficult to meet monthly bill payments.

“I plan to file my taxes to get the remaining six months' payments,” said Susann Ali, 38, a Germantown Head Start teacher. "But until then, we will continue without the money that helped me pay my three children's tuition in Catholic school."

And after those payments are complete, Ali added, he worries Congress won't restore the aid he had come to depend on:

"I thought they would have extended credit by now, and I'm afraid they never will."

Expected popularity

The expanded CTC was expected to be so popular that Congress would automatically renew it for 2022 and several more years.

But so far that hasn't happened, despite continued efforts to do so. And polls show that not all Americans like the idea. A December study by Morning Consult/Politico found that just 47 percent of Americans favor expansion, compared with 42 percent who oppose it.

More importantly, West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said he would not support expanding credit without a work requirement. Manchin's vote is key in a Senate split evenly between Democrats and Republicans.

That view is espoused by conservatives like the American Heritage Foundation, which explains that extending the expansion to 2022 would actually hamper anti-poverty efforts by persuading people not to work, but instead that simply collects government funds.

This is a minority opinion.

In a widely recognized study last fall, Columbia University found that "increased CTC has not had a negative impact on labor force participation among parents."

The Columbia investigation also found that the increased tax credit kept nearly four million children out of poverty and that food was the top item families spent their federal money on.

“If one of the goals was to reduce child poverty, expanded credit was a tremendously successful policy,” said Temple University sociologist Judith Levine, director of the Public Policy Lab at the school.

“But now children are being pushed back into poverty and the timing is dire, with the pandemic on the rise and parents having to put work aside to be with their children while schools and day care centers close.”

The end of the expanded CTC will not stop the typical CTC that families have been receiving for years. But it will mean less money. The expanded CTC went from $3,000 to $3,600 per child. The normal CTC was around $2 thousand and was delivered in a single payment.

‘Legislative violence’

Congress's refusal not to extend the CTC beyond 2021 infuriates poverty and inequality experts.

"Allowing the child tax credit extension to expire is yet another example of the US government's willful neglect of families with children, a clear example of legislative violence," said Mariana Chilton, director from the Center for Hunger-Free Communities at the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University.

Chilton is a supporter of universal basic income, a proposed government program in which each adult citizen receives a fixed amount of money on a regular basis.

The fact that the expansion of the CTC is not permanent "means that a moment of optimism would have ended in which deeply rooted injustices and hardships could have been changed," said the sociologist of the University of Pennsylvania Pilar Gonalons-Pons.

And, according to Levine, the United States, “which fails miserably in reducing child poverty, misses an opportunity on the world stage to catch up with other nations that treat children better and families."

That failure resonates with Mia Thomas, 37, an unemployed mother of a 13-year-old daughter in West Philadelphia.

Expanded CTC allowed Thomas, who has multiple sclerosis, to get something rare in his life: a bank account.

“The money was a godsend that allowed me to create a little nest egg,” he said. “But now, I am struggling without the monthly payments to pay rent and utilities.

“I'll try to keep my bank account. But it's going to be an uphill battle."

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