 The Biden administration is a plan that's estimated to cut child poverty in half and it's already begun It's called the child tax credit Here's how it works Parents of children under the age of six are receiving direct payments of up to $300 per month per child or $3,600 per year per child the payments dropped to $250 a month for children between the ages of six and 17 and phase out for families with higher incomes It's an historic expansion of the original credit. It's already helping millions of working families I've always lived paycheck to paycheck and so It will continue to be helpful and keep us going the direct payments are coming because the child tax credit is a refundable tax credit normal non refundable tax credits simply cut your taxes, but a Refundable tax credit like the child tax credit helps you even if you don't earn enough for it to reduce your taxes So it's a direct payment to you Say you owe $3,000 in taxes a non refundable tax credit of $3,600 won't be worth $3,600 to you. It would just reduce your taxes to zero So you wouldn't get the full benefit and if you don't owe any taxes to begin with a Non-refundable tax credit wouldn't do you any good at all Since you can't reduce your taxes to less than zero dollars, but a refundable tax credit would help you You'd get the money no matter what the full $3,600 that's why this expansion is such a big deal it ensures that the money gets to lower income families The early results showed that this policy is a game-changer Over three million more households with children now report having enough to eat after just the first two payments More report being able to make rents stay in their homes and afford basic necessities and Three million children have been lifted out of poverty It's reduced racial disparities as well hunger has fallen by one third among Latinx families And by one quarter among black families It bears repeating that if the credit is made permanent and reaches everyone it should it could cut child poverty in half Yet the Republican Party the so-called Party of Family Values is dead set against it Republicans were concerned This was a paving the way for universal basic income if it became permanent and now Democrats are trying to do just that. That's because the program works Every single Republican in Congress voted against the American Rescue Plan which contain the initial Expansion of the child tax credit you can bet they're all going to vote against making that expansion permanent in the Democrats Reconciliation bill. It's obvious. They do not care about helping working families Democrats must get this done no matter how staunch the Republican opposition in the richest country in the world It's inexcusable that millions of our children are living in poverty For decades almost all economic gains have gone to the top leaving working families behind This historic expansion of the child tax credit is a crucial step towards righting this wrong poverty is a policy choice Congress must make the child tax credit permanent