Hillary Clinton proposed Tuesday to double of the child tax credit, a late policy proposal she hopes to move in a divided Congress but one that may also put new pressure on Donald Trump’s campaign.
In a statement sent out Tuesday morning, the Democratic nominee called for raising the child tax credit from $1,000 a child to $2,000 for children up to age four. The existing tax break would be redesigned as a more readily-available refundable credit, meaning that families with no income tax liability would effectively get a check from the government.
The campaign said that the expanding child tax credit was just a “down payment” on her middle class tax cut agenda, which before Tuesday had not been sketched out. In particular, the campaign suggested that a plan for benefits for families with children between the ages of four and 17 is forthcoming.
Clinton’s plan would cut taxes for millions of families with children, representing a step toward her promise of capping child-rearing expenses for parents. “This new tax credit will make their lives a little bit easier and help restore fairness to our economy,” Clinton said. The campaign estimated that up to 15 million children would be eligible for the credit.
The new tax break will also sharpen one of the Democrat’s recent campaign lines of attacks against Trump: That she supports relief to middle-class families, while he would raise taxes on some them. While Trump would cut tax rates across the board, an analysis published in September by New York University professor Lily Batchelder found his plan would also result in some middle-class families paying more, a finding Clinton has tried to exploit.
Clinton has tried to propose deficit-reducing measures to ensure that her spending and tax cut proposals do not add to the debt. The tax credit’s cost, roughly on the order of $150 billion over 10 years, would be offset with greater estate taxes and other taxes on assets passed on by wealthy families.
Overall, Clinton is proposing to increase taxes by $1.5 trillion over a decade, the vast majority of it on high income earners and wealthy families, in order to nearly offset about that much in new spending programs, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
