President Biden hints that Sen. Manchin is the reason the Child Tax Credit is ‘effectively dead’

During a speech in Auburn Washington this week, President Joe Biden pointed to the fact that West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin’s failure to support the Build Back Better spending bill late last year is the reason the Child Tax Credit is likely not coming back.

“We lack one Democrat and 50 Republicans from keeping it from passing this time around,” Biden said to the crowd in Auburn. “But it really fundamentally changed the lives of millions of people.”

The president was referring to Manchin, whose vote against the bill effectively killed it in the evenly-divided Senate. The White House needed every Democrat to vote in support of the bill in order for it to pass.

The Child Tax Credit, an expanded tax relief program that put cash in the pockets of parents nationwide every month for one year, expired at the beginning of this year. It could have been renewed if not for the failure of the Build Back Better spending plan in the Senate.

According to the president, child poverty dropped by 40 percent during the period of time when the Child Tax Credit was being issued. When the program expired, a wave of child poverty washed over the United States once again.

According to the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, there were 3.4 million more children living in poverty in February 2022 than there were in December 2021, the last month of the Child Tax Credit.