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Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) released a statement on the Biden Administration’s new “Child Allowance,” which goes into effect on Thursday, July 15. The new program transforms the existing Child Tax Credit into a monthly welfare payment for the next six months. Parents, including those who do not work, will receive monthly payments of $250 per child under 18, and $300 per child under 6.

“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. “The way President Biden tells it, the handout is part of his administration’s ‘pro-family’ plan. In reality, he has transformed the pro-worker, pro-family Child Tax Credit into an anti-work welfare check.

“In recent months, Americans have seen the destructive consequences that follow when the government pays people not to work,” Rubio continued. “These new payments will recreate the same problems and cause totally new ones. Not only does Biden’s plan abandon incentives for marriage and requirements for work, but it will also destroy the child-support enforcement system as we know it by sending cash payments to single parents without ensuring child-support orders are established.

“The Biden Child Allowance is anti-work, and it certainly isn’t pro-family. No one should be fooled,” Rubio concluded.

Rubio has long supported expanding the Child Tax Credit to hardworking families. In 2017, he worked with Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) to double 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 $3,500 (including $4,500 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:
·         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