"We the undersigned organizations are writing to strongly urge you to prioritize expanding the Child Tax Credit (CTC), focusing on low-income children. This is particularly important to address increases in child poverty rates, and timely given efforts to pass a bipartisan tax agreement before the end of the year.

There are currently 19 million children excluded from the full credit because of the structure of the CTC. In deliberating a potential year-end or early 2024 tax package, Congress has an opportunity to improve the CTC for the lowest income families currently left out of the full benefit. When Congress expanded the Child Tax Credit in 2021, child poverty fell by 46%, lifting 716,000 Black, 820,000 White, and 1.2 million Hispanic children out of poverty in just one year— a stunning achievement. Research shows that most low-income families spent the expanded CTC on basic necessities like food, utilities, and rent or mortgage payments, as well as education. But when the CTC expansion was allowed to expire, the proportion of children in poverty more than doubled, from 5.2 percent to 12.4 percent – much of this because of the expanded CTC.

Congress must act given dramatic increases in child poverty. Unacceptable levels of hardship are increasing — just before Thanksgiving, 16 percent of people with children reported sometimes or often not having enough to eat in the past week, up from 10.4% in the summer of 2021. Some do not understand that the vast majority of children whose families are left out of the full CTC are working – but their families do not make enough to get the full CTC. Children in families with incomes above the federal poverty line have better school performance, better health outcomes, and are more mentally and emotionally well-adjusted. Ensuring that the full Child Tax Credit reaches the lowest-income children who need it most will have immeasurable benefits to families and our society for generations to come.

We hope you’ll do the right thing and expand the Child Tax Credit, focused on reducing child poverty in a way that will benefit 19 million children who struggle the most to have their basic needs met, in any forthcoming tax package. This is an important opportunity to include improvements to the CTC that could help lift many children in the lowest income families in this country out of poverty and provide the maximum credit to those children currently left out. This is an urgent opportunity as families struggle to put food on the table and meet basic needs, and we rapidly approach a new tax filing season. We are counting on Congress to seize this opportunity.

Sincerely,"