I was a girl when my family was evicted, all our belongings on the street.

We moved in with my grandmother. At our kitchen table, I learned about the importance of raising your voice for change, and working for all those struggling to get by and get ahead.

John, I learned never to give up. It’s been just over 18 years since I first introduced my plan to lift millions of children out of poverty by expanding the Child Tax Credit, a plan that has now finally been implemented for the next year through the pandemic relief package signed this month by President Biden.

President Biden’s Chief of Staff on my work to expand the Child Tax Credit

This afternoon, I met with Vice President Kamala Harris in New Haven to discuss the historic impact of the American Rescue Plan, and why the changes it implements to lift millions of American children out of poverty must be made permanent.

As of this morning, more than 40 Democratic U.S. Senators have written a letter to President Biden encouraging him to make this change permanent. Do you support permanently expanding the Child Tax Credit to cut child poverty virtually in half?

Yes I do!

So what took so long?

There were years Democrats didn’t even want to talk about poor children. It was hard to get people’s attention, to get people to really understand that we could help millions of children and their families out of poverty.

But I wasn’t giving up. My parents would never have accepted “no” for an answer.

This legislation expands and improves the Child Tax Credit, and makes it fully refundable — if you are so poor that you do not owe taxes, you now get the tax credit in cash, monthly. Families will all get the same monthly payments, unless parents opt for annual benefits.

Poor, working, and middle class families will receive $300/month, per-child ($3,600/year) for children under 6 years of age and $250/month, per-child ($3,000/year) for children between the ages of 6 and 17. No new bureaucracy, no need for a new agency.

John, more than 11.9 million children struggle against poverty in the United States, but the Biden administration’s relief package only expands and increases the Child Tax Credit for one year — this falls far short of providing a stable foundation for the future.

Now must be the moment where we make permanent changes to lift generations of children out of poverty. Please add your name here if you agree that Congress should pass my legislation to permanently expand and improve the Child Tax Credit→

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The economic devastation that’s come with the COVID-19 pandemic has deepened the crisis of child poverty for an ever-growing number of working families.

But we can help them all — studies show that we could cut Black child poverty by 52.4%, cut Hispanic child poverty by 45.4%, and cut Native American child poverty by 61.5% by permanently expanding the Child Tax Credit.

Sign my petition now to support the permanent expansion of the Child Tax Credit. It took 18 years of work to make this moment possible, and it’s critical that we keep the pressure up to make the temporary changes enacted by the American Rescue Plan permanent:

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Thank you for standing with me in the fight to end child poverty,

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro