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Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) spoke on the Senate floor today to outline the merits of an expanded child tax credit.
Yesterday, Rubio joined Special Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump, Senators Tim Scott (R-SC) and Mike Lee (R-UT), and several members of the Senate and House to discuss the child tax credit. Rubio recently released an analysis showing this credit remains the best way to provide meaningful tax relief for working American families. Last week, the Senate unanimously voted to include the Rubio-Lee child tax credit amendment in its budget resolution.
Rubio’s speech can be watched here. A partial transcript of Rubio’s remarks is below.
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio
U.S. Senate Floor
Washington, D.C.
October 26, 2017
YouTube
RUBIO: We truly believe that the family is the most important institution in society and parenting is the most important job you will ever have. I don’t care what you are. You’re the president, a senator, a congressman. I don’t care what you do. The most important job you will ever have, the most influence you will ever have, the most impactful thing you will ever do is raise a family…
[R]aising children is expensive. If you’re raising children right now or have any time in the near past, you know how expensive it is. …
Just go out one day this weekend and talk to the people you know who are working parents and ask them. And they’re going to tell you one of the most expensive things they face, especially between the time their children are born and the time they turn four or five, is child care. In over two-thirds of the states in this country, it costs more, costs more for child care than it does to go to college. So imagine you make $800 a week that you take home but you have to spend $400 a week on child care for your two kids. That’s half your paycheck. So I’m not saying a child tax credit fixes all that. I’m saying that’s a cost that keeps going up. It’s the reason why the tax credit has lost about $300 in value from the time it was last expanded in 2003. And then the other thing to add to it is if you look at some of the changes being proposed on the personal deduction, that’s another $500 off.
So, in essence, unless the [child tax credit] at $800 per child, we are just breaking even. And that’s why we have to have a child tax credit that’s at least $2,000 to really have an impact.
And the other thing we have to do is make it refundable. What that means, it has to apply against payroll tax – Medicare, social security taxes that comes to fica that comes immediately off your paycheck. Everybody pays that tax. Not everybody pays income tax because if you don’t make more than a certain amount of money, you don’t have an income tax liability. But you are paying taxes. It’s called the payroll tax. And if we don’t deal with that, if we don’t make the child tax credit apply to that, then you’re basically not cutting taxes or not helping the vast majority of people who need it.