Child Tax Credit Hurts Marriage, Expands Welfare State

A report published in late July by the Washington Stand detailed how the supposed Child Tax Credit (CTC) “expansion” just expands the welfare state and penalizes people looking to get married, experts said.

Democratic New York Sen. majority leader Chuck Schumer said Monday that he plans to force a vote in Congress goes into its August recess on what he called an “expansion” to the CTC, but experts issued warnings soon after about the reality of the language. (LEARN MORE: ‘God On My Side’: Trump Reflects On Assassination Attempt)

“They say it’s tax relief, but 90%, 91% of the expenditure is for families that do not pay or owe any income tax,” Heritage Foundation senior fellow Robert Rector told Tony Perkins of Washington Watch. “It’s simply a welfare payment. … It’s not intended to be tax relief. It’s a cash grant. Primarily about 75 to 80% of it goes to single parent families. It’s a subsidy system for single parent families. And the intention of this is to kind of reverse welfare reform from the 1990s, which said, ‘Look, we are not going to deny people aid. We’re not going to put people on the street, but we expect people who are able-bodied and get assistance, whether it’s cash, food, housing, or medical care from the government, they ought to be required to do something to support themselves and their families.’ This [bill] is a way of getting around that and talking about it in a completely misleading way, that, ‘Oh, this is about tax relief.’”

Welfare System?

“This is a welfare system that not only subsidizes single parenthood and non-marital birth, but it imposes … dramatic financial penalties on low-income parents who choose to marry,” Rector added. “A family where maybe the father makes $25,000 a year, the mom makes say $20,000 — as long as they don’t marry and he’s off the books, she gets tens of thousands of dollars from the government. As soon as they marry, they can lose up to $20,000 a year in welfare payments. So we’ve deliberately made marriage economically irrational for about 40% of the population.” (LEARN MORE: Christians Called To Shine ‘Light’ On ‘Dark Institutions’)

“We needed more children within the context of marriage — that was the idea of welfare reform,” he argued. “And welfare reform was very successful. At the time that welfare reform was passed, one in 10 children in the United States was born to an unmarried teenage girl 17 or younger. And it was going up. Even The Washington Post was upset about this, but they said there’s no solution. As soon as we put welfare reform in effect, that said, ‘You’re not going to get a lifetime of welfare from the welfare system,’ that immediately dropped, and that rate has dropped down close to zero. … [A]bortions among these young women also fell by the same rate. … There are 10 million fewer abortions that have occurred since welfare reform. [The Tax Relief for American Families bill] will reverse that.” (RELATED: Assassination Is ‘First Political Memory’ For Many Gen Z)

Defend American Values Today

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