Fact check: Vance falsely claims Harris is calling to end the child tax credit, which she is actually calling to increase

By Daniel Dale, CNN

Washington (CNN) — Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance is facing criticism over his previous comments about people without children, including one 2021 remark denouncing “childless cat ladies” in government and another in which he said that, in order to “tax the things that are bad and not tax the things that are good,” people without children should pay a higher tax rate than people with children.

Vance is now trying to turn the tables on the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris. In a Fox News interview that aired Sunday, Vance said, “I think a lot of parents and a lot of non-parents look at our public policy over the last four years and ask, ‘How did we get to this place? How did we get to a place where Kamala Harris is calling for an end to the child tax credit?’”

Facts First: Vance’s claim that Harris is calling to end the child tax credit is false. In fact, it is the opposite of reality: Harris has called for years to increase the child tax credit. As vice president, she has advocated for the permanent adoption of the enhanced child tax credit that was temporarily in effect in 2021 under a pandemic relief law – a law that was signed by President Joe Biden after it was passed by Congress with only Democratic support.

Spokespeople for Vance and the Trump-Vance campaign did not immediately respond to CNN’s Monday requests to offer any substantiation for Vance’s claim. But a Vance spokesperson, William Martin, argued to ABC News last week that “the policy Senator Vance proposed is basically no different than the Child Tax Credit, which Democrats unanimously support.”

That’s a far more debatable assertion than Vance’s own claim on Fox News that Harris is calling to end the child tax credit, which is just wrong. Erica York, senior economist and research director at The Tax Foundation think tank, said in a Monday email that Vance’s claim is “false.”

“VP Harris has not called to end the child tax credit, has regularly highlighted the significant expansion of the credit the Biden-Harris administration oversaw during the pandemic, and has a history of supporting expansions to the credit,” York said.

Vance prefaced his 2021 comments about tax policy and children by speaking of his desire to use policy to “reward the things that we think are good” and “punish the things that we think are bad.”

York noted that the “ultimate effect” of the child tax credit is that people with children have lower tax rates than people without children, but she said Vance “misleadingly” equated the Harris campaign’s criticism of his 2021 comments with opposition to the existence of the child tax credit.

Vance’s claim on Fox News was not a one-time slip. He made a similar comment last week in an interview with conservative host Megyn Kelly, saying, “Why do we have the Harris campaign coming out this very morning, Megyn, and saying that we should not have the child tax credit?” The Harris campaign has not said that.

Harris has repeatedly called to expand the child tax credit

Harris’ support for an expanded child tax credit predates her vice presidency. In 2018, as a US senator for California, Harris co-sponsored a Democratic bill to increase the credit. She co-sponsored another version of that expansion bill in 2019, when she was running in the Democratic presidential primary.

As vice president, Harris has made numerous comments in support of returning to the enhanced child tax credit that was authorized as a one-year temporary measure by Biden’s 2021 American Rescue Plan pandemic relief law.

The temporary expansion – which increased the maximum amount of the credit, made the credit fully refundable so the lowest-income families could qualify and sent out half of the credit in monthly payments – was a major contributor to a steep decline in child poverty in 2021. Child poverty then spiked in 2022, roughly to pre-pandemic levels, after Congress allowed the expanded credit to expire against the wishes of Biden and Harris.

A bipartisan House bill that would expand the child tax credit again has stalled in the Senate this year amid Republican opposition.

Harris posted on social media in March: “President Biden and I cut child poverty nearly in half after expanding the Child Tax Credit for millions of working families. It’s time for Congress to restore the full expanded Child Tax Credit.” She posted in March 2023: “The expanded Child Tax Credit cut the child poverty rate nearly in half during the first year of our Administration. Our budget restores this tax credit permanently because we believe it is our duty to invest in our nation’s children.”

She has also talked up the 2021 expansion of the child tax credit on the campaign trail in recent weeks.

In a July 18 speech before Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, she said, “Whereas the last administration gave tax cuts to billionaires, we gave tax cuts to families through the child tax credit, which cut child poverty in America by half.” She touted the expansion again in a speech to a historically Black sorority after Biden dropped out, saying, “We believe in a future where no child has to grow up in poverty, which is why I helped pass the child tax credit, which cut child poverty in half and cut Black child poverty even more.”

CNN’s Tami Luhby contributed to this article.

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