News

Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Mike Lee (R-UT) filed an amendment to the Senate Budget Resolution to expand the Child Tax Credit and prevent the credit from being transformed into a new welfare program that pays parents not to work. Specifically, the amendment would create a Deficit Neutral Reserve Fund (DNRF) for expanding the Child Tax Credit while ensuring the credit does not go to individuals who are not working. At issue is the Biden Administration’s new Government Child Allowance, which the Budget Resolution seeks to extend. The new program transforms the existing Child Tax Credit into a monthly welfare payment for the next several months. Parents, including those who do not work, will receive monthly payments of $250 per child under 18, and $300 per child under six.
 
“Over the next six months, some American households with no working adults will receive over $6,000 in cash payments from the federal government,” Rubio said. “This new Government Child Allowance scraps incentives for marriage, destroys the child-support enforcement system, and abandons requirements for work. We’ve seen the destructive consequences that follow when the government pays people not to work. We need to take common sense steps to support working parents, not recreate the failed welfare state.”  
 
“To have a truly pro-family tax code, we must have a pro-growth and pro-worker tax code,” Lee said. “Creating monthly welfare payments under the Government Child Allowance, however, will only disincentivize marriage and the responsibility of parents to provide for their families. That’s why we instead support expanding the Child Tax Credit: to help provide meaningful, positive tax relief for America’s working families.”
 
Rubio and Lee have long supported expanding the Child Tax Credit to hardworking families. In 2017, they doubled it as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which tax return data confirmed has cut taxes for millions of working American families. Earlier this year, Republicans unanimously voted for a Rubio-Lee proposal to further expand the Child Tax Credit to $3,300 (including $4,200 for children under age 6), refundable to the extent of payroll tax liability.
 
In 2020, as Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, Rubio wrote and passed the Paycheck Protection Program, which saved millions of jobs in Florida. Former CBO director Doug Holtz-Eakin called it “the single most effective fiscal policy ever undertaken by the United States Government.”
 
Related:

• July 19, 2021: ICYMI: Rubio: Biden, Democrats Aim to Transform America With Radical Budget
• July 14, 2021: Rubio: Biden ‘Child Allowance’ Is Anti-Work, Anti-Family
• June 24, 2021: Rubio: Why Biden’s ‘Child Allowance’ Will Harm the Economy, Hurt Families
• April 28, 2021: Rubio, Lee Call on Congress to Pass Tax Relief for Working Families
• March 5, 2021: Rubio Files Budget Amendments to Open Schools, Help Working Class Families, and America’s Middle Class
• March 1, 2021: Biden’s COVID Bill Fails America
• February 25, 2021: Breakdown of Lee-Rubio Child Tax Credit Plan
•  February 9, 2021: Rubio: Americans Want a Bipartisan COVID Plan
• February 4, 2021: Rubio, Lee Statement on Child Tax Credit