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child poverty
Congress, Don’t Repeat the Mistakes of the 2017 Tax Cuts
The new House bill would disproportionately benefit the well-off—and harm the financial well-being of millions of working Americans, including Black women like me.
Jun 08, 2025
In early 2018, I remember sitting at my kitchen table, trying to make sense of how the 2017 Trump tax law was supposed to help families like mine.
I’d read headlines promising “middle class tax relief.” But when tax season rolled around, there was little relief to be found—especially for me, a Black woman navigating caretaking for elderly parents and a demanding career. My refund was smaller, my deductions had vanished, and the math simply didn’t add up.
It was clear then, as it is now: the Trump tax cuts weren’t designed with people like me in mind.
Let’s be clear: The 2017 Trump tax cuts failed Black women—and millions of others—the first time around. They widened inequality, rewarded the wealthy, and ignored the economic realities of everyday families.
Now as more GOP tax cuts for the rich move through Congress, history is poised to repeat itself. The bill would disproportionately benefit the well-off—and harm the financial well-being of millions of working Americans, including Black women like me.
Instead, lawmakers should embrace the “Black Women Best” framework and take a different path. Coined by Janelle Jones, the principle is that when Black women are thriving, then the economy is truly working for everyone.
For example, when the 2017 tax cuts were passed, most of the benefits went to wealthy, white households. Had lawmakers considered the financial realities of Black women, who are typically underpaid, they could have made a package better designed for all those who need the most help—not just Black women, but everyone struggling to make ends meet.
Refundable tax credits like the Child Tax Credit (CTC) are one of the most direct ways the government supports working families. When structured fairly, they give families a much-needed financial boost.
The 2017 tax law increased the CTC from $1,000 to $2,000 per child. But many families receive far less because it restricted the refundable part of the credit for those with modest earnings. That left out many of the lowest-income families—including 45% of Black children (double the share of their white peers)—whose parents didn’t earn enough to qualify.
In 2021, President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act, which temporarily restructured the CTC to make it larger and fully refundable. For the first time, all the families at the bottom received the full credit. The results were stunning: Child poverty hit record lows.
But that progress was short-lived. The expanded credit has not been renewed, and child poverty shot right back up.
This time around, the House temporarily boosted the CTC to $2,500. But limits on the refundable portion would be continued, meaning 17 million of the lowest-income children in America will still be left out.
Using the “Black Women Best” framework would make those expanded benefits permanent—not just because it’s the right thing to do for Black families, but because it lifts up the entire economy.
But instead, in this way and others, the bill favors the already wealthy.
Another significant example is the bill’s deduction for income people receive from “pass-through” businesses. Rather than pay a corporate income tax, these business owners pay taxes on their profits through their personal taxes. The 2017 tax law created a 20% deduction for this kind of income—and now lawmakers want to permanently increase it to 23%.
Increasing this deduction means Congress is giving handouts to those already holding the keys to wealth. A Treasury report showed a jarring 90% of the people who received this benefit were white. Only 5% of the benefits went to Hispanic taxpayers—and just 2% to Black taxpayers.
Let’s be clear: The 2017 Trump tax cuts failed Black women—and millions of others—the first time around. They widened inequality, rewarded the wealthy, and ignored the economic realities of everyday families. Repeating those mistakes in 2025 would be more than negligent—it would be a deliberate choice to uphold a broken system.
But there’s another way. When Black women thrive, everyone wins. It’s time for our tax code to reflect that truth.
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Trump Adviser Who Loves Corporate Giveaways Says He Has 'Doubts' About Child Tax Credit
"Trump's economic adviser is openly trashing a tax cut for working families that lifted millions of children out of poverty," said a spokesperson for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris' campaign.
Aug 28, 2024
An outside economic adviser to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said this week that he has "doubts" about the Child Tax Credit, a program that Democratic lawmakers and President Joe Biden expanded in 2021—briefly slashing the nation's childhood poverty rate in half.
Heritage Foundation fellow Stephen Moore, a co-author of the far-right Project 2025 agenda, said in a C-SPANappearance on Monday that the Child Tax Credit (CTC) "worries" him because "we can't just keep giving people money"—an argument that he doesn't seem to apply to wealthy individuals and profitable corporations.
Moore proceeded to trot out a well-worn and debunked right-wing case against the credit and other benefits for lower-income households, saying that "if we keep just passing out free money to people, you're going to discourage people from working."
Watch:
Q: Does the child tax credit help children?
Trump 2024 economic advisor: I have some doubts about it. We can’t just keep giving people money. The child tax credit discourages people from working pic.twitter.com/BwmxH0yJMe
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 28, 2024
Moore, whom Trump once selected for a seat on the board of the Federal Reserve, is an outspoken champion of further slashing the corporate tax rate. The Washington Postreported last year that Moore personally urged Trump to support reducing the corporate rate from 21% to 15%, a change that would hand the nation's 100 largest companies an annual tax break of nearly $50 billion.
Additionally, the Project 2025 agenda that Moore helped craft would cut taxes for households making more than $10 million a year while raising taxes on the typical family of four, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the Center for American Progress (CAP).
"Project 2025's new tax bracket system," wrote CAP's Brendan Duke, "represents an enormous shift of the tax burden from wealthy tax filers to middle-income tax filers."
Project 2025 also calls for tax reform that "eliminates most deductions, credits, and exclusions," without specifically mentioning the CTC.
While the Trump campaign has unconvincingly sought to distance itself from Project 2025 as it becomes increasingly clear that the U.S. public widely opposes it, Moore has described the agenda as a "dream scenario."
"Donald Trump and his Project 2025 allies are hellbent on raising taxes on working families, while promising handouts to their billionaire donors."
Democratic nominee Kamala Harris' campaign seized on Moore's C-SPAN appearance on Wednesday, saying in a statement that "Trump's economic adviser is openly trashing a tax cut for working families that lifted millions of children out of poverty."
"Donald Trump and his Project 2025 allies are hellbent on raising taxes on working families, while promising handouts to their billionaire donors," said Joseph Costello, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign. "In stark contrast, Vice President Harris is fighting to cut taxes to put thousands of dollars back in the pockets of working families."
Moore's comments on the CTC came roughly two weeks after Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Trump's running mate, expressed support for more than doubling the tax credit, which in its current form provides up to $2,000 per child annually to families that qualify.
But last month, Vance skipped a vote on legislation that would have expanded the CTC, opting instead to visit the U.S.-Mexico border for a photo-op.
"If JD Vance sincerely gave a whit about working families in America, he would have shown up," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said of Vance in a statement earlier this month. "Bottom line, the guy's a phony."
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Expanded Child Tax Credit Would Give Boost to 6 Million Poor Children
Ample research indicates that providing additional income to families with low resources yields significant, lasting benefits for young children’s health, education, and future earnings.
Mar 20, 2024
The House-passed bipartisan tax bill would expand the Child Tax Credit for 16 million children in families with low incomes—including 5.8 million young children (under age six)—in its first year, bringing them up to or closer to the full $2,000-per-child amount that children in higher-income families receive. The Senate should pass it without further delay.
Young children of all races and ethnicities would benefit from the bill’s Child Tax Credit expansion. Overall, the expansion would deliver a larger credit to 1 in 4 children under age six. It would benefit even larger shares of Black, Latino, or American Indian or Alaska Native young children, whose parents are overrepresented in low-paid work and may face more limited economic opportunities due to historical and ongoing discrimination and other structural barriers.
Looking at these children under six, we estimate that:
- 39% of all Black;
- 37% of all Latino;
- 34% of all American Indian or Alaska Native;
- 16% of all white; and
- 15% of all Asian children of these ages would benefit.
The expanded Child Tax Credit would provide meaningful support to families. Consider, for example, a married couple with a kindergartner, a toddler, and a newborn. One parent earns $30,000 as a cashier while the other parent stays home to care for their children. The expansion would boost this family’s credit by $1,275 in the first year, helping them afford groceries, utility bills, and other necessary expenses.
Ample research indicates that providing additional income to families with low resources yields significant, lasting benefits for young children’s health, education, and future earnings. The Senate has an opportunity to help 1 in 4 children under age six. Lawmakers should act quickly to pass the bipartisan tax package.
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