>> From July to December of last year, parents received monthly payments worth up to $250
per child if they were between the ages of six and 17 and slightly more if they were under
six years old. That ended up benefiting 36 million households and according to research
payments, kept 3.7 million kids from poverty and reduced monthly poverty by 30%.
It was a fairly unprecedented social policy change in the United States with a fairly unprecedented
effect in a very short period of time. Well, in the span of just one month from December
of last year to January, the monthly child poverty rate increased from 12.1% to 17%,
the highest rates seen since the end of 2020.
Black and Latino children experienced even higher increases in poverty with 5.9% and 7.1% increases
respectively. Because this is like a constant and virtually everything we talked about, it's
all bad, but it's disproportionately worse if you don't happen to be white in America. Researchers
say that child poverty rates often fall during tax season as people get their returns.
So the second half of the credit received from filing taxes is quote likely to
result in a substantial but temporary dips and monthly child poverty rates.
After April researchers say the child poverty rate could
be persistently high through the rest of the year if the payments aren't renewed.
Well, I haven't seen a lot of talk, a lot of pressure from politicians to get this done.
Maybe Brett with this horrendous news getting out there maybe if it's talked about enough
they'll do something although again, I don't know even how they would do it.
Like are we talking about them trying once again to do a reconciliation bill?
Do we think that any republicans would sign on to this to get it past
traditionally, I sort of doubt it. >> It's just so weird this is a simple one,
this is do you want kids to be hungry or not?
And I love the wrists and the responses to it are insane.
The responses like well the parents are making these choices
and they need to reap what they sowed in terms of not having a job.
The Republicans will probably try to move it into a like, well let's open the economy back
up and mask mandates and end all that that's happening right now.
Let's all of we're all moving on from that but that's gonna be the argument that they make.
But like the easy, simple everybody kumbaya, let's feel good about ourselves
argument of like let's put the child tax credit. This is a rare situation where not only Democrats,
like the Democrats are against something but Republicans are against a tax credit.
They're always the ones like let's get rid of these taxes, I'm paying too many taxes.
Like why don't we give a tax credit to people with kids, let's do that. But it gets mired in
this ridiculous argument that's like listen the immigrants, they're the ones with too many babies.
>> Yeah nd it's a constant amount
obviously, the less money you have, the more significant this amount will be, especially as
if you have more than one child. You get the same exact amount, theoretically if you're richer,
but it doesn't matter to you, it's such an inconsequential amount of money.
It's the exact opposite way that tax cuts generally are passed in this country. Usually
it's only really beneficial if you have massive quantities of money and therefore taxes already.
This is far fairer and more equitable in the way that it works and so what do you know,
this is the one that the right doesn't give a damn about.
>> And also, I do wanna point out in that stat you said about
after April and the tax season, where people are getting their refunds,
just a reminder that so much of the work force is going from W2 to 1099. Which means
there's a lot of independent contractors and a lot of them don't get with holdings.
So essentially, the reason you get a refund is because when your paycheck comes through
the government, they're setting some aside and giving it to the government along the way.
So you, you've already paid your taxes and they give you back when you overpay.
With this 1099 gig worker economy,
depending on like your specific relationship with the employer in which employer it is.
A lot of times they're just like, here's all your pay and you take it and it's not a lot,
but you spend it because it's not a lot. And then at the end of tax
season, you have to do your taxes and the government's like, you haven't paid us yet.
So here's all the money you owe us turning this whole thing on its head at a time when they're
relying on people who already have paid their taxes when the opposite turns out to be true.
And that people are double left. >> Yeah,
and I will close by saying, if you are a conservative that are watching this.
I know the stuff where we were acknowledging that the increase in poverty is worse for black
and Latino families has probably made you totally tune out. You're probably
not here anymore but I will remind you that, let's see, we've got 1.4 million
white children additionally being sent into poverty and going hungry.
And I've got news for you, they're not all Libs, there are a lot of conservative
white families that have a ton of kids that benefited massively from this sort of
program. And it's, it's one of the best pieces of evidence that like I know that you've been trained
to hate the Democrats and hate anyone proposing plans like this.
But these sorts of plans almost necessarily benefit conservatives far more than the
culture war nonsense. That's the only thing they will ever deliver for you.