Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-WA) closed out Children’s Week 2020 with a conversation about how to fight child poverty in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
DelBene, a Defender of Children, told First Focus Senior Vice President for Tax and Budget Michelle Dallafior, that changes to the Child Tax Credit were key to helping struggling families.
“Every child in our country should have the opportunity to succeed,” she says. “Unfortunately, this pandemic has left many families without jobs, forcing them to choose between paying rent or feeding their families and this is unacceptable.”
DelBene, along with Rep. Rosa DeLauro, introduced the American Family Act (H.R. 1560), which would tackle child poverty by increasing and expanding the Child Tax Credit and having it distributed monthly, changes that would effectively transform it into a child allowance. DelBene and colleagues also managed to include those same provisions in the $3 trillion Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act, which provides emergency relief to families suffering the pandemic’s economic fallout. The key now, she said, is to actually deliver that aid to families.
“Now we need the Senate to move,” she says. “This is critical.”