In 2017, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) helped reduce taxes for families with children by an average of $2,570 by expanding the child tax credit system. But it expires in 2025.
That’s why efforts like the Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion urged by Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, myself and a long list of pro-family leaders late last year are so important.
We don’t know what will replace the 2017 tax law, or whether the family-friendly tax measures embedded in it will persist. But American families can’t afford not to know.
Most of the goods that the average American family needs to purchase regularly, including groceries and gasoline, are more expensive — dramatically so — now than they were four years ago. Most raises, if they’re offered at all, aren’t keeping up with inflation anymore. Childcare costs have risen for the past decade, with families now spending an average of 27 percent of household income on childcare. Home prices have grown faster than wages. So has rent, in 92 percent of metropolitan areas.
Imagine a family, already struggling to make ends meet, falling afoul of the end of child tax credits and no longer receiving that $2,500 reprieve. With more than half of America living paycheck to paycheck, that money could pay for a surprise medical bill, a car repair, a home repair or even unexpected travel needs.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of materially supporting strong families through policies like this one. The family has always been the building block of civilization. In families, the sovereign citizens of truly free nations are born, raised and educated. In the family home, our future voters and statesmen are shaped.
Why would we leave such an important institution to crumble under the combined pressure of cultural attack and needless economic hardships?
For the sake of our own long-term political prospects as a nation, we must attend to the strength of the American family. At the time of the founding, strong families were the norm, not the exception. The Founders didn’t explicitly argue for the significance of the family because they took it for granted. Marriage law at the time was vastly more restrictive than it is today, in large part because marriage was such a precious institution in both social and moral terms.
But the reality of marriage has not changed, nor have its political implications. Strong families are still the only institution capable of producing the robust, intelligent, prudent, moral citizens capable of living within and sustaining a truly limited government.
Weaken families, however, and you empower tyrants.
It’s also true that a tax credit is more fiscally responsible and conducive to a free market and free people than federal handouts. A tax credit rewards the breadwinner by making sure more of their income stays in their pocket, to spend on their family’s needs.
We can’t abandon our families to a world where they’re either rendered dependent over time upon government funding for their livelihoods, or left without aid at all. A tax credit is an effective and important middle way.
We must act in 2024 to ensure that the families who will build our future are given the support they need today. It’s essential that lawmakers enthusiastically promote policies like the CTC, and that voters prioritize the issue.
Hopefully, in the future, average American families will have $2,500 to spare every year. But right now, the rest of the nation needs to help them help themselves. They’re counting on us. They are us.
Support an expanded tax credit for families with children. We owe our future a better today.
Timothy Head is the executive director of the Faith & Freedom Coalition.