URGENT Action Alert – Expand the Child Tax Credit NOW

The below is the latest Action Alert from the Food Research Center. The article illustrates how movement in our government can help so many families in low income households get food on the table. But they need your help!

“Yesterday, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) announced a bipartisan, bicameral tax proposal. This proposal includes improvements to the Child Tax Credit (CTC) that would help 16 million children in households with low income put food on the table and lift hundreds of thousands of children and their families above the poverty line. Your advocacy is needed now to ensure that key components of the CTC remain intact on the road to passage and that Congress moves swiftly. That makes contacting your Members of Congress especially essential right now.

Nineteen million children are currently left out of receiving the full or any CTC. Under the latest proposal, more than 80 percent of these children would benefit, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The announced proposal includes key improvements that are essential to supporting families with children, though it falls short of the comprehensive improvements that were made through the American Rescue Plan Act 2021 CTC expansion.

Use the FRAC Action Network to send a clear and targeted message to your Members of Congress that the tax package must continue to be centered on the 19 million children currently left out of the full refundable child tax credit or any credit. See FRAC’s statement on the proposal.

Families are struggling to pay for food, rent, child care, and other household expenses, while food insecurity and hunger rates continue to soar. The expanded 2021 Child Tax Credit helped millions of families put food on the table and dramatically lifted them out of food insecurity and poverty. With its expiration, hunger and poverty rates among households with children nearly doubled.

Congress must use this opportunity to help eradicate hunger. Call and urge your Members of Congress to stand up and make the right policy choice—the one that will improve the nutrition, health, and well-being of millions of children—and speak out and support the final tax package that includes an expanded CTC that supports families who have been left behind.”

• State fact sheets: here
• FRAC Research Brief: here