Would Harris’s Expanded Child Tax Credit Be Worth the Cost?

Kaleena Daugherty, a mother in Milwaukee, knows what it would be like to get the expanded child tax credit that Vice President Kamala Harris has proposed and that some Republicans support. She has lived it.

In 2021, Congress expanded the federal credit, increasing the payout, depending on the child’s age, to $3,000 to $3,600 per child, up from a flat $2,000 per child before. Congress also increased the number of people who were eligible, focusing on including the poorest Americans. And the credit could come in monthly installments, instead of the yearly lump sum that families got in the past.

For Ms. Daugherty, the bigger tax credit was a lifeline. She caught up on bills without taking on more credit card debt and student loans. Most importantly, she said, she could spend more time with her 12-year-old son — something she had not been able to do while working as many as three jobs and getting her master’s degree in public administration.

“It was the greatest thing,” said Ms. Daugherty, 39. “I really miss that.”

But the same advantage that Ms. Daugherty saw in the law — the ability to spend less time working — was a disadvantage in critics’ eyes. They worry that the expanded tax credit would reduce incentives to find a job, hurting the economy. They also argue that expanding the credit would cost too much, running up already high government deficits.

The child tax credit “is a costly transfer program for taxpayers with kids who do not need government handouts,” the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, has said.

In 2022, after one year, Congress allowed the expanded child tax credit to expire.

Ms. Daugherty said that without the expanded credit, and after several years of high inflation, she is now struggling. She is hanging on by working two jobs — one in social work, another at a restaurant — and carefully balancing her finances with her partner.

“We rely on credit cards, and by deciding which bill can be put off,” she said. “Like, the water bill doesn’t affect your credit, so I don’t have to pay that right now.”

But she still can’t cover everything; she couldn’t purchase some school supplies this year. She’s pregnant, with a daughter on the way this month. She and her partner have saved some money to prepare for the moment, but unexpected medical bills have come up related to the pregnancy and hernia surgery.

Ms. Daugherty is not alone. While it was in effect, the expanded child tax credit reduced child poverty in the U.S. by nearly half, studies have found. In 2023, the child poverty rate across the U.S. was 13.7 percent. If the expanded credit had still been in effect, the rate would have been 8.6 percent, according to the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University.

Ms. Daugherty’s home city of Milwaukee could especially use the help, she said. It has one of the highest child poverty rates in the country, at 30 percent. As a social worker, Ms. Daugherty said she sees much of that suffering firsthand.

She cited, in particular, a lack of affordable high-quality child care. She recalled one experience when her son was 3 years old: She left him at a day care center — costing $1,200 a month, paid for with student loans — only to one day find her son sitting outside, alone, when she went to pick him up. “The cost of day care doesn’t mean quality,” she said.

Ms. Harris has said that she would restore the bigger credit and add an additional boost for newborns, to $6,000. Her plan would cost $1.2 trillion over 10 years, nearly five times the cost of her proposal to support affordable housing, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, has said he favors expanding the child tax credit as well, though he is vague on details.

With the credit expanded again, Ms. Daugherty said, she would be able to meet the basics that her family needs, from rent to groceries, without relying on credit cards and other borrowing.

“It feels like such a privilege to raise children without a struggle,” she said, adding, “With the cost of living going up as much as it has, it’s just very difficult.”