The American Family needs help

We can do better than tax credits to help parents start and grow their families on their own terms

Dear Mainer,

This past Sunday, Izzy and I were blessed to welcome a newcomer to the family, our second daughter, Shirley. Our first daughter, Rosemary, was born in 2021. 

Rosemary is very excited to be a big sister. She summed up our feelings very simply, when she looked at Shirley and told Izzy and me, “I love her.”

Being a father has changed my perspective on some things, which I’m confident is no surprise to those of you who are parents yourselves. Because my family is a growing, increasingly central part of my life, I find myself thinking about my work in Congress through the lens of my family and others like ours. 

It also has me thinking more and more about the role of our government in promoting family stability. Because to be honest, the American family needs a little help. 

Everyone knows that the decision to have children adds expenses, from child care to diapers to groceries. Americans tend to earn more as we age and gain experience in our careers, so for most parents these new expenses come at one of the lower-earning seasons of life, when taking on new costs is particularly difficult. This makes it harder to start or grow a family. 

Research bears this out: It shows that a lack of economic stability prevents many Americans from having as many children as they would like, when they want to have them. More and more children are also being raised in single-parent households, while study after study show that kids benefit from having both parents at home. 

There are other challenges for young families. Well before I was born, American families used to be able to cover the basics with a single paycheck. That is rarely the case today. Even with two-income households, wages for many working families have largely stagnated as costs continue to rise. In a two-parent household, it’s not uncommon for most or nearly all of one parent’s paycheck to go toward child care. 

All of us know parents who wish their family had the economic wherewithal to let mom or dad stay home, especially early in a new child’s life. Maybe you’re that parent yourself. (It’s worth noting this desire to have more time for caregiving isn’t limited to parents of young children; This dynamic also plays out when family members become sick, or when our elders reach the time of life when they need more assistance.) 

The federal government does have some programs designed to help families with kids cover the basics, such as the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC).

But I think these programs fall short: For one, you need to file your taxes to even claim the benefit. Plus, these benefits are disbursed once a year during tax filing seasons, even though families have to meet a budget every month. For some reason, Congress has also decided that wealthy families with incomes above $400,000 should be eligible for benefits, while some of the poorest families get nothing. 

The truth is that tinkering with the tax code is a needlessly indirect way of supporting families with the timely, flexible income support they need. 

I think America needs to get serious about supporting families so that people who want to have kids can do so without fear of going broke, and so that parents have real choices about how to structure their households and raise their kids. That’s why I am working on a proposal to create something akin to a social insurance program for young families, similar in some ways to Social Security for seniors. 

In designing this program, I have a few goals: 

• Strengthen working class families with monthly payments to expecting mothers and new parents at a level that will truly make a difference in helping make ends meet every month.

• Do so in a way that increases a family’s options, such as the options of paying for child care or allowing a parent to stay home.

• Make more families eligible than are currently able to receive the full Child Tax Credit, while ensuring benefits aren’t wasted on higher-income families by phasing out the program at a lower income threshold than the CTC.

• Pay for the program by raising taxes on the top 10 percent of earners, those who earn at least $172,000 a year in 2021 dollars, to ensure the children who benefit are not saddled with growing debt or deficits when they are adults.

• Provide a bonus to two-parent households and incentivize work while ensuring a sudden job loss or change in relationship between parents doesn’t result in a benefit cliff at an already challenging moment.  

Washington has lots of handouts in the tax code for the rich and big corporations, and a maze of programs to support the very poor. But most people aren’t very rich or very poor. My goal is to support the great middle of this country, to give a hand-up to working class people so they can start or grow their families.

Unlike government programs that seek to engineer specific outcomes, my goal is to give individuals and families control over how to use the money to achieve their own goals. And by decoupling America’s family-support policies from the tax code, we can make it far simpler for everyday people to plan for and access them. 

My team and I are still working out the best way to meet these goals, but I hope to be able to share more details with you and to submit legislation very soon. 

As always, thanks for taking the time to read my letter to you and please don’t hesitate to write back. Dozens of you responded to my call for letters last month, and I’m working my way through them to read every single one. Check out my last post if you’d like to join the discussion. 

Respectfully,