Congress has stepped in to grant three much-needed and timely stimulus checks to most eligible Americans over the duration of the two-year-long, economically debilitating coronavirus pandemic.
However, since the American Rescue Plan approved the most recent third direct stimulus payments last spring, the White House and Congress have done little except chatter.
Americans are still navigating their way through the ongoing health crisis and unrelenting high-inflationary pressures, which are wreaking havoc on the pocketbooks of ordinary, hardworking residents, despite Washington's silence.
There is, however, potentially good news on the way for many Americans who have children in the near future. The new plan, suggested by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), would essentially reinstate the expanded child tax credit, which many Americans saw as an unofficial form of a recurring fourth stimulus check when it expired at the end of December.
When people started receiving stimulus checks at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, many parents also received up to $300 per child as part of the enhanced child tax credit of 2021. However, Congress has yet to pass more stimulus checks, and President Joe Biden's proposal to extend the child tax credit through 2022 was defeated in the Senate.
Romney's proposal, known as the Family Security Act, would provide $350 per child to eligible families with children under the age of five, and $250 per child to households with children aged five to seventeen.
Expectant parents would also be able to start receiving compensation four months before their baby's due date. In addition, there will be income limitations, with family payouts capped at $1,250 per month.
In an effort to win more bipartisan support, the payments will most likely include a work requirement, which has also been supported by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who effectively killed the Build Back Better measure, which aimed to prolong the enhanced credits for another year.
However, some claim that imposing job restrictions on CTC recipients intentionally misunderstands the importance of family and caregivers in a child's development. Furthermore, they argue that a CTC employment requirement will aggravate racial disparities and hinder the policy's effectiveness to combat poverty, which is the polar opposite of the program's primary goals.
We know that more than half of Black and Latino children were previously excluded from the CTC because their families did not earn enough money to qualify, and reinstituting this racist policy could obliterate the progress our country has made thus far, critics say.
