Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in spring 2020, Americans have received three stimulus payments: $1,200 in March 2020, $600 in December 2020, and $1,400 in March 2021. In addition, for the last six months of 2021, many parents got up to $300 per month per child.
However, Congress has shown a reluctance to provide extra stimulus funds, and President Joe Biden's plan to prolong child tax payments until 2022 was defeated in the Senate. A new bill, however, would reintroduce direct payments to support families.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, introduced the Family Security Act, which would provide $350 per month to eligible families with children ages 0 to 5, and $250 per month to those with children ages 6 to 17. The bill would also allow pregnant parents to apply for benefits beginning four months before their child's due date. The monthly payment would be $1,250 at the most.
"American families are facing greater financial strain, worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, and marriage and birth rates are at an all-time low," Romney said. "On top of that, we have not comprehensively reformed our family support system in nearly three decades, and our changing economy has left millions of families behind."
For example, a married couple earning $38,990 per year - 150% of the federal poverty level - receives a $7,041 end-of-year lump sum tax return. Their yearly benefit would increase by $2,318 under the Family Security Act, with 75% of the increase coming in monthly installments.
According to Romney's plan, the benefit would be decreased by $50 for every $1,000 earned above certain income criteria, which would be $200,000 for single filers and $400,000 for joint filers. It would also impose job restrictions on the recipients.
Last year, Romney introduced the bill, but it failed to garner traction among lawmakers. It was just revived after Biden's Build Back Better Plan, which included child tax credit extensions, died.
"Now that it's clear Build Back Better isn't moving forward and with bipartisan opposition to extending the President's ill-crafted Child Tax Credit, the Administration has an opportunity to actually work with Republicans and Democrats on lasting, fiscally-responsible family policy," Romney said.
But there still might be hope.
According to White House sources, Biden will attempt to use his Tuesday address to resurrect attempts to pass his roughly $2 trillion Build Back Better Act.
Despite the fact that the package failed to obtain the required Democratic backing in the Senate due to inflation fears, Biden will resurrect the stalled social spending plan.
