The Child Tax Credit
Floor Speech
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Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I want to thank the two leaders that I joined, Senators Brown and Bennet, for championing this issue, not just for this Congress but for years. Before I came to Washington, these two men were standing up and talking about the moral core of our country.
If you want to see how a nation is doing, don't look at the buildings we build or at how many billionaires we have. Just look at children. What is galling me right now is that we have come to the 1-yard line.
We are at an inflection point in our country where we have to ask a question: Who are we?
My friend Senator Bennet and I have been working with kids well before we came here. He rattled off data that should be repeated. I say this is a moral issue, but he has shown us it is an economic issue. We are the wealthiest Nation on the planet Earth, and of the top 41 countries, we are at 38 in poor kids. What he pointed out is that poverty costs all of us. It is a deep, self-inflicted wound in this society, because poverty costs this Nation over $1 trillion as measured by economists.
But I would state that economists don't measure all the things that are important. Our GDP does not reflect well-being. It doesn't reflect how many antidepressants people take or how many child deaths there are. But the truth of our economy is that every dollar that we invest in getting children out of poverty returns $8 to this economy. So it is an economic issue, clearly.
It is a globally competitive issue because in a global, knowledge- based society, the Nation whose children learn the most will earn the most and will outcompete.
It is a national security issue as we go up against countries like China, whose top 10 percent of their graduating high school classes outnumber all the children we have, virtually.
But it is a moral issue most of all. If we are going to create a more beloved community, how do we treat our children?
Children who live in poverty literally have physical effects. Poverty is violence. Study after study shows that the brain development of children in poverty is inhibited, literally--the stress hormones, the cortisol. It is akin to an adult having a traffic accident every single day. It is an indicator of childhood trauma.
Poverty is a moral obscenity, and we, the richest Nation on the planet, where, year after year, our rich are getting richer, our children are getting poorer--who are we when we pledge allegiance to a flag and say ``liberty and justice for all''? Who are we?
We don't even know the demographic changes in our country. We have cities across America where 1 out of every 10 children is being raised by a grandparent. So here we are discussing childhood poverty, and some people are talking about work requirements, when we know from the data, from conservative think tanks to what we see in other nations like Canada, that things like the child allowance--or in our country, the child tax credit--increase workforce participation. But if you get rid of the child tax credit, those grandparents raising grandchildren--half of them--plunge back into poverty.
The stories are profound.
We heard from my colleague from Colorado. We know families in New Jersey, like a woman I just saw named Margarita. She used her child tax credit payments for exactly what so many said they would be used for. She used them for food for her children, for school supplies, to keep the electricity running in her house. We have heard stories that they are used for a car bill to get people to work. They are used to pay for childcare that they need for their families so that they can work. Families are not using this money so they could quit their jobs. Quite the contrary, they are using them so they can get to work.
We are a nation in crisis because of how we treat our children. The child tax credit is a lifeline for the millions of grandparents raising grandchildren. It is a lifeline for low-income children.
So you heard from Senator Bennet. We are at an inflection point. What will we do right now? Will we extend the child tax credit? Will we make the full refundability permanent? Will we keep people having these monthly checks? That is a policy question. But the question before us really is a moral one. For once and for all, this is not partisan. It is a defining moment for the character of our country, and I say words are not enough.
We should show the child tax credit--the truth in our policies and what we do with our budgets. We should show our love through what we do, not what we say. And the best leading indicator of that will always be how the most vulnerable in our society are doing, how we take care of our elderly, and, in this case, how we care for our children.
I am honored now to have come to the floor our Senator from Georgia. I would remark that as much as I love the Senator from Ohio and the Senator from Colorado, the Senator from Georgia has a much better haircut.
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