Blue State Families Would Get Far Bigger Child Tax Credit Savings Than Red States

The U.S. Capitol building on Dec. 29, 2020. Eric Baradat/AFP via Getty Images

News Analysis

Families in states carried by President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election would receive significantly higher savings under his proposed child tax credit than those in states won by former President Donald Trump, according to data provided by the House Education and Labor Committee and analyzed by The Epoch Times.

The committee issued an analysis on Oct. 6 that calculated the average child care savings that would be received by the average family of four with one infant in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, based on State Median Income for such a family.

The benefit is intended primarily to help families with child care costs and provides about $300 per month for qualifying families. The credit was first approved in the $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” stimulus package Biden proposed and Congress approved with only Democrat support. Biden’s $3.5 trillion Build Back Better reconciliation spending plan now before Congress would make the tax credit permanent.

A spokesman for Rep. Robert Scott (D-Va.), the committee’s chairman, didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time. In a statement released with the data for each state, however, the committee’s Democratic majority claimed that significant assistance would be provided.

“Under the plan advanced by the Committee on Education and Labor, the typical ... family of four using center-based child care could save thousands of dollars every year. The Build Back Better Act’s child care investment would give families greater financial security, allow more parents [to] rejoin [the] workforce, and help grow the economy,” the statement reads.

“Under the Build Back Better Act, families making 100 percent of the State Median Income would pay no more than two percent of their income on child care. Savings are projected by calculating the difference between the current average child care costs and two percent of income for families making the State Median Income.”

The analysis noted that “average child care costs are from Child Care Aware of America’s January 2020 survey of Child Care Resource and Referral State Networks.”

“Child care cost estimates were not available for Montana. Instead, we use Child Care Aware of America’s national averages to approximate child care costs in this state,” the statement reads.

Liberals generally favor the benefit, with Valerie Jarrett, former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, writing recently in Roll Call that Congress should move to “ensure that every eligible family is able to access this life-changing benefit. An estimated 5 million households need to take further action to claim their monthly payments.

“The majority of these families do not earn enough money to file taxes, making less than $12,000 per year as individuals or $24,000 per year as a couple. We can only deliver on the full promise of the CTC if everyone who is eligible—particularly these very low-income families—can access their benefits.”

Nationwide, the average child care savings that would be received under the Biden proposal by a typical family of four with one infant child would be $10,056 annually, according to The Epoch Times’s calculation using the committee’s data.

But the savings wouldn’t be spread equally across the country, with the 25 states that Biden carried in the 2020 presidential election and Washington, which Biden also carried, receiving substantially more on average than those living in the 25 states carried by Trump.

The red-state average is $7,914, compared to $12,033 for the blue states, a 52 percent advantage for families residing in the latter jurisdictions. Critics of the proposal said it’s consistent with other Biden initiatives that favor some groups over others.

“Once again, we are reminded that Biden’s economic agenda picks winners and losers,” Heritage Action for America Executive Director Jessica Anderson told The Epoch Times. Her group is associated with the Heritage Foundation conservative think tank.

“With this $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, Biden wants to subsidize the lives of coastal elites while forcing working- and middle-class Americans to foot the bill. From cradle to grave, Democrats are attempting to remake America and use our taxpayer dollars to do it,” she said.

Similarly, the Family Research Council’s (FRC) Connor Semelsberger, told The Epoch Times that the committee’s data demonstrate “just how much Biden’s Bankrupt Busy Families Plan benefits elite families in progressive states at the expense of middle class American families and the working poor.”

“The proposed child care entitlement program seeks to institutionalize care for infants—practically from birth—taking children out of the care of parents at the most formative stages in life, even if those parents would prefer to keep their children at home,” Semelsberger said. “It is a clear effort to force both parents to work outside the home and at the expense of parents who decide to stay home to raise their children.

“It is now clear that the Democrats’ plan is to place new tax burdens on families with one breadwinner, making Idahoan and Iowan stay-at-home parents subsidize child care outside the home for wealthier two income families in places like California and New York.”

Semelsberger is director of FRC’s Federal Affairs for Life and Human Dignity.

Public support for making the tax credit permanent is weak, according to the latest Politico/Morning Consult national survey, with only 17 percent of the respondents “definitely” favoring it and 18 percent “probably” backing it.

By contrast, 34 percent of the respondents said they definitely don’t favor making the credit permanent and 18 percent said they probably oppose it. Thirteen percent said they don’t know if the credit should be made permanent.

The survey interviewed 1,998 registered voters, with a plus-or-minus 2 percent margin of error.