One thing both campaigns agree on: bring back money for parents

Both presidential campaigns are eyeing more cash for kids.

The 2024 election has already taken myriad twists and turns, but candidates’ platforms are finally taking shape — and it looks like parents are top of mind for both.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, and running mate Tim Walz have proposed multiple measures to put more money into parents’ pockets.

One is catered toward parents of newborns; under the Harris-Walz plan, middle and lower-income families would get a $6,000 tax credit in their children’s first year of life. Harris and Walz are also proposing restoring the enhanced child tax credit, which rose to $3,600 under President Biden’s American Rescue Plan. After that measure initially lapsed, 5 million children fell into poverty.

“We know this works and has a direct impact on so many issues, including child poverty. We know it works,” Harris said in campaign remarks. “So, as president, I’ll not only restore that tax cut but expand it.”

As governor of Minnesota, Walz helped boost the state’s child tax credit to $1,750 per child — the highest in the country, per the Minnesota Star Tribune. An August accounting by the state found that 215,000 tax returns claimed the credit, with families receiving, on average, $1,244 per child.

The Trump-Vance campaign is also seemingly eyeing its own version of a child tax credit expansion. Vance, Trump’s running mate, has floated a potential $5,000 child tax credit — over double the current maximum amount.

“I’d love to see a child tax credit that’s $5,000 per child,” Vance said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “But you, of course, have to work with Congress to see how possible and viable that is.”

Historically, Vance has expressed concern about falling birth rates, and has thrown his support behind policies that would make giving birth free and that would ensure parents aren’t penalized for quitting their jobs to stay at home with newborns.

It’s less clear where Trump himself stands on the issue, although a Trump campaign official told Semafor’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig that Trump will “consider a significant expansion of the child tax credit that applies to American families.” The Trump campaign did not respond to B-17’s request for comment on expanding the child tax credit; the GOP 2024 platform says that Trump and Republicans would make permanent a child tax credit expansion from his sweeping 2017 tax package.

However, both proposals would hinge upon Congressional action — and, so far, that hasn’t led to much movement, even with bipartisan support. A tax package from Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat and the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and Representative Jason Smith, the Republican House Ways and Means Committee chair, would have bolstered the child tax credit to $2,000 by 2025. That proposal garnered bipartisan support — and passed the House — but did not make it past a Senate vote.

In fact, as Wyden noted, Vance did not show up to the vote for that package.

“If JD Vance sincerely gave a whit about working families in America, he would have shown up in the Senate a week and a half ago and voted for my proposal to expand the child tax credit and help 16 million low income kids get ahead,” Wyden said in a statement after Vance backed an expanded child tax credit. “He didn’t even care enough to use his platform to call on his Senate Republican colleagues to support it.”