No matter who we are and where we’re from, we all believe in giving kids their best start. That’s what the Child Tax Credit (CTC) does: It’s cash to help make families make ends meet. Simple.

The CTC has been around since 1997, and during the pandemic Congress expanded it to provide more help to more families. The 2021 expanded tax credit lifted 2.9 million children out of poverty, and when Congress failed to extend the expanded credit in 2022, the child poverty rate more than doubled. Because families with the lowest incomes were no longer eligible, that meant millions of children all over the U.S. going to bed hungry.

That’s not right. But we have it in our power to fix it, and our most powerful weapon is your story.