Editor’s note: The following letter, sent by the Coalition on Human Needs and signed by CHN Executive Director Deborah Weinstein, was delivered to all members of the U.S. Senate.

On behalf of the Coalition on Human Needs, I am writing to urge you to vote yes on the motion to proceed on H.R. 7024, the bipartisan Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024. We urge the Senate to consider and ultimately pass this bipartisan tax package at the first opportunity because it includes important improvements to the Child Tax Credit (CTC). We see Thursday’s vote as a crucial step.  You can act to provide needed help for 16 million children in families with low wages, or you can stand in the way of moving this help forward. The Coalition on Human Needs is an alliance of over 100 organizations including faith groups, human service providers, policy experts, labor, civil rights, and others concerned with meeting the needs of people with low incomes. CHN reaches hundreds of thousands of concerned individuals nationwide, and we know that over the past months, they have emailed over 200,000 letters to Congress, urging action to expand the Child Tax Credit (CTC). They and a great many others impatiently await your action.  

The CTC provides critical assistance to families as they confront the rising costs of raising children, and it can lift millions of children out of poverty. The Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024 is a step in the right direction. It includes a partial expansion of the CTC, which can provide assistance to millions of families facing continued higher costs for food and housing along with other economic challenges. On January 31, the House of Representatives passed the legislation by a wide margin of 357 to 70, with overwhelming and rare bipartisan support. No other legislation before this Congress would have anywhere close to this bill’s impact on reducing child poverty and helping families meet their basic needs.

H.R. 7024 would increase the CTC for 80 percent of the families with low incomes who do not now receive the full credit.  It would lift 400,000 children out of poverty in tax year 2023, rising to 500,000 above the poverty line in 2025.  More than one in five children under the age of 17 will benefit in the first year of this legislation, including one in three Black and Latino children and three in ten American Indian/Alaska Native children, because their parents are more likely to be in low-paid jobs. More than one-quarter of all children under 17 living in rural areas would benefit, and we know the expansion of the CTC would positively impact (see these state-by-state numbers) children and their families in your state.

CHN and our members pledge to continue to advocate to expand the CTC further to help the poorest children. We see this legislation as a step to help families struggling to meet basic needs; it is likely our best opportunity this year to boost the incomes of millions of families and lift thousands of children above the federal poverty line. We are strongly opposed to any changes to H.R. 7024 that would take the expanded CTC away from families, and urge you to oppose any amendments that would undermine the CTC provisions in this package.  

Families need this help now. This past May, more than 24 million people, or 11 percent, reported that their households sometimes or often did not have enough to eat in the previous week, according to the U.S. Census Household Pulse Survey. For Hispanics and Blacks, the numbers were strikingly worse – 16 percent and 18.5 percent, respectively. Fully 10.4 million people with children, or one in seven, reported sometimes or often not having enough to eat in the same time period. The extra money the expanded CTC will provide will make a real difference in families’ ability to pay for their basic needs, and that will mean healthier children with fewer school absences and more school progress. 

Congress must not turn away from the opportunity to help this huge proportion of America’s children and their families.  Please vote YES on the motion to proceed on H.R. 7024 and work with your colleagues to ensure an expansion of the Child Tax Credit goes into effect as soon as possible.