Child Tax Credit

Floor Speech

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Mr. BROWN. Michael Bennet, thank you. You said this is a new day. I loved how you set that up. The mayor of Denver gets a tax cut or at least pours money into the richest neighborhoods in Denver, expecting that to trickle down or trickle out to help other neighborhoods and other people. It obviously doesn't work that way any more than the--I was going to say the Bush tax cut, but it has been their playbook for years. Whenever they get a majority, they give a tax cut to rich people, arguing it will trickle down. It never does. Senator Booker has been so articulate about that. As you say, Senator Bennet, it is a new day for this country.

I think the three of us think--and I think that Senator Hickenlooper, the Presiding Officer, has thought this, as have most Members of the Senate--that this is perhaps the most important thing we have done in this Senate in 25 years.

Tomorrow, parents across the country will check their bank accounts. Not all of them are going to know what Cory Booker, Michael Bennet, and all of us did, but they are going to see, most importantly in many ways--maybe my religious faith teaches me this. It is almost better that these people have these--they get these checks in Cleveland and Akron and Mansfield, and they have no idea how they got them. They didn't know I had anything to do it as their Senator; they just know their lives are better.

Families will see $250 or $300 direct-deposited into their accounts every month for the next 6 months, and then they get the rest of the year in a lump sum. Then, as Senator Bennet and Senator Booker said, it is up to us to make this permanent.

In my State, 92 percent of the kids in the State are eligible. We have a great majority--at least, we think, 90 percent of them will see these checks this week either in their bank account or in their mailbox. We have to make sure we get the other children who are eligible. Their parents may not have filed a tax return, and those families need to go to childtaxcredit.gov to make sure they get this benefit.

Even before this pandemic, we all know hard work wasn't paying off for millions of workers. We have seen in the last 20 years that productivity has gone up. Corporate profits have exploded. CEO pay has soared almost unimaginably. Yet wages have essentially been flat. That has gone on for decades even though the cost of everything is up, especially the cost of raising children.

Our child tax credit recognizes the fact that raising children is work. It happens to be the most--maybe it is not compensated the same way, but it happens to be the most important work any family can do. But from childcare to health insurance, to transportation, we have seen that a hard day's work doesn't begin to cover expenses for so many parents, and even middle-class families don't feel stable.

As a result, 2 weeks ago, we were out of session, and I spent the week in Fremont, in Defiance, in Cleveland, and in Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Youngstown, and Toledo talking to people about the child tax credit. The stories I heard from people--these were mostly parents who will benefit. These are some community activists whose kids may have been grown or don't have kids. But the stories I heard, things like--Senato Bennet and I had a discussion with people from Denver and Cleveland one day on Zoom a couple weeks ago, too, and we heard over and over that parents were saying: Every month we just have to figure out, during the last week of the month, how are we going to pay our rent.

Now those families will have a little more comfort in knowing and less anxiety knowing they will be able to make their rent payment.

I heard a number of parents say: Well, now I can send my son, for the first time, to scout camp or to day camp during the summer. Other parents said: I don't have to choose between the food we need to buy and buying diapers. I don't have to reuse diapers.

All the kinds of stories, we heard. People were saying: I don't have to work that second job and be away at night. I can get daycare on my regular job and get the benefits and have a little money so that I can do these things.

And the stories are as limitless as the number of people who are involved.

And maybe the best part of this--and Michael and Cory and I have talked about it. Maybe the best part of this is we have SNAP benefits. We know that is important for hungry families. We know the hungry people and the children especially. We do the rental assistance, emergency rental. We know how important that is. But these dollars-- this $250 or $300 a month, it goes to families, and they make the decision about what they need. I don't make it.

The senior Senator or the junior Senator--even though the junior Senator is older, right, than the senior Senator? I am confused.

But the Senators from Colorado don't make the decision. The Senator from New Jersey and I don't make the decision. These decisions are made by the mothers and fathers who go to their mailbox and get this check or see it in their direct payment.

So we know that this is not just good for those families. It means dollars in their pockets. It means they can make decisions they couldn't have made. It means they can build a foundation for their own children to have more opportunity--all of that. But this is also really good for the community. It means more dollars are spent at local restaurants, more dollars are spent at local stores. So that is an important part of this, too, that it will help to lift up our economy.

Families aren't putting this money in a Swiss bank account, unlike the tax cuts that Senator Bennet talked about with the Trump tax cuts that every Republican supported, virtually, and that blew a hole in the budget. That money was put in Swiss bank accounts. It doesn't trickle down. This money is spent in the community.

This is how we grow the economy. This is how we invest in the people who make it work. We don't shovel tax cuts to the very top and hope it trickles down. We know it never does. With these tax credits, we show parents and workers: We are on your side.

We won't stop fighting until these tax credits are permanent. Senators Booker and Bennet have talked passionately and persuasively about that.

I would add a couple other thanks here. Two of my staff are sitting in the back of this hall, Katie Mulhall and Chad Bolt, who have made this tax, working with Senator Bennet's and Senator Booker's and Senator Warnock's staff--in making these tax cuts to reduce the poverty rate and making this happen this session with President Biden's active support.

I also would call out two staff people, one of whom is still in the office and one who is now working in the House of Representatives, Jeremy Hekhuis and Gideon Bragin, who began work on this in 2013, when we first started working with Rosa DeLauro and the work that she had done. I thank all of them for making this happen.

I especially thank my colleagues from Colorado and Georgia and New Jersey. We keep fighting to give these families the peace of mind that these tax credits will be there for them up until their children are 18 so they can raise their kids with a little less anxiety and a little more comfort and a whole lot more opportunity.

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