The Kid Angle: Blah, blah, blah. Stop talking about the Child Tax Credit. Do it.

Amid all the talk of pet eating and other bizarre claims in Tuesday night’s presidential debate it would be easy to miss the very first — and possibly most important — policy point that was made: American families need an improved Child Tax Credit.

Not once, but twice that night — including in the first three minutes of the conversation — Vice President Kamala Harris highlighted her plans for an improved Child Tax Credit. The Vice President’s proposal would deliver $6,000 for newborns, $3,600 for kids to age 6, and $3,000 for kids to age 18, and would eliminate some of the penalties families currently encounter. Former President Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance has floated a $5,000 Child Tax Credit but there’s been no indication that the ticket has any intention of acting on it.

Candidate Trump said nothing at all on Tuesday about the Child Tax Credit (or about children at all for that matter) and, in fact, his 2017 Child Tax Credit offered a meager $2,000 to a few lucky kids until they turn 17, or until their family income drops, whether as result of job loss, death, natural disaster or any other situation beyond their control.

We’ve seen what the Child Tax Credit can do. In 2021, improvements to the Child Tax Credit cut child poverty nearly in half, sending it to just 5.2% — the lowest level in U.S. history. This week, however, figures from the U.S. Census Bureau revealed that child poverty is back with a vengeance: Nearly 14% of all U.S. children — or 9.962 million kids — lived in poverty in 2023, according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), a 10% increase from last year and a 163% increase from 2021

It is always a good time to invest in kids, but this new piece of information makes the need particularly urgent. On Thursday, Sept. 19, First Focus on Children will present the findings of its 2024 Children’s Budget to lawmakers on Capitol Hillrevealing the share of spending allocated to kids across more than 250 government programs in the federal budget. Policymakers, experts, and advocates join to analyze the report and the policy implications of underinvesting in our nation’s 72 million children.