Thread by @ChuckCBPP

Previously, I did a thread on a double standard around work, the Child Tax Credit, & the tax treatment of the inheritances of wealthy heirs

With House passage (!) & shift to the Senate, I wanted to focus on a double standard stemming from the Child Tax Credit’s creation in 1997

In 1997, the original child tax credit was intentionally designed to encourage – some – parents to work less: “some cultural conservatives promote the credit as a way to entice more mothers to stay at home with their children.” wapo.st/3aZz0N1

More: "Because of the tax burden on families, the woman is often compelled to go out and bring in a second paycheck," said Paul Hetrick, vice president of Focus on the Family. "This is a regrettable situation that our country will pay the price for in generations to come."

This social conservative concern about the next generation & and creating an incentive for Moms to work less did not extend to low-income families: "That's welfare," responded Christensen. "If you aren't paying income taxes, it's insane for us to be giving you an income tax cut."

Before fast-forwarding to the current debate, I want to trace some of the evolution of the Child Tax Credit since its 1997 creation. Note that the original credit was tied to income tax liability. A tiny near forgotten provision included a tie to payroll taxes

This tax connection was a dead end for people – including myself as a staffer back then - who wanted to extend the child tax credit to more families with lower incomes and this is when the connection of the Child Tax Credit to work enters.

In 2001, a bipartisan group of Senators led by Olympia Snowe leveraged their votes in the Senate to force inclusion of making the Child Tax Credit partially refundable, starting at incomes above $10,000 and phased in at 15 cents on the dollar

Then in 2008, Speaker Pelosi, a long-time champion of the credit, used her leverage with President Bush to reduce this indexed earnings threshold, which had risen with inflation, to below $9,000.

Then President Obama and Congressional Democrats lowered the earnings threshold to $3,000 temporarily and it was eventually made permanent with Republicans extracting tax cuts for wealthy heirs and corporations in return along the way

Most recently in2017, and somewhat sadly ironic given their current posture, Senators Rubio and Lee convinced their GOP colleagues to lower the threshold to $2,500 and to mitigate the damage of the pernicious refundability cap the House GOP advanced

Stepping back for a moment, whether to advance incremental change or to pursue game-changing, more pure, policy change is a constant and important back-and-forth to have. People play different roles.

In the case of the Child Tax Credit, I think these incremental changes over decades made millions of kids better off. But I understand some of the criticism, and even vitriol, directed at people like me for this approach.

As traced above, the Child Tax Credit evolved over time from a tax nexus to a work one with the double standard of who should be encouraged to work more and who to work less remaining intact throughout. Now is the time to end this double standard, permanently.

My colleagues @TrisiDanilo and Ife Floyd of @TeamTANF_CBPP have an excellent and timely paper coming out on Monday on the employment effects of the Child Tax Credit expansion. In the closing tweets of this thread, I re-up some of the other best pieces I’ve seen on this issue

Here is one from @ezraklein with some great points from @povertyscholar: nyti.ms/3bIAudr

Here is another excellent one from @EricLevitz: nym.ag/2O9p0HH

And a spot on one from @GeneSperling who was right in the middle of the creation of the Child Tax Credit in 1997: politi.co/3bMrmVc

Finally, here is our general paper on the power of the critical expansions of the Child Tax Credit and EITC. End bit.ly/37RkLaS