The temporary expansion of the federal Child Tax Credit in 2021 – along with making it fully refundable – helped cut child poverty nearly in half. When Congress refused to make the expansion permanent, it drove child poverty right back up to its previous levels. This year, as the presidential candidates are deeply divided on a range of issues, some common ground is emerging between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance: As Marisa Calderon writes in a column for MarketWatch, both campaigns are proposing to make the CTC more generous – though their plans differ greatly from each other.
The Republican plan that Vance proposed would offer $5,000 in tax benefits per child, while Harris has proposed $6,000 per child for the first year after the child’s birth and $3,600 per year thereafter. However, the details of each plan are still unclear, particularly regarding whether the CTC would be fully refundable — a crucial aspect for low- to moderate-income families who might not owe enough in taxes to benefit otherwise. The Republican plan also eliminates income restrictions; meaning that every family, regardless of income, would get the benefit. The Democrats’ proposal, conversely, does not speak to changes to the current income restrictions, which are set at $200,000 for a single parent and $400,000 for a couple.
Elsewhere, state legislators are also trying to offset the increasingly prohibitive costs of raising children. In New York, as Route Fifty reports, a GOP state senator wants to give all new parents a $1,000 “baby bonus.”
Ashby’s bill, introduced earlier this month, would supplement the state’s existing child tax credit, which gives low- and middle-income families up to $330 a year per child under 17. The $1,000 newborn payments would go to all parents. More than 200,000 babies are born in New York every year. Both the existing and proposed credits are fully refundable, meaning parents can receive them even if the credit amount is more than they owe in taxes.
Repeated efforts to establish a state child tax credit in Louisiana have failed to gain traction at the Legislature.
Home visiting gets a boost
A new home-visitation program by the New Orleans Health Department that’s designed to reduce the city’s high rates of infant and maternal mortality is showing promising signs of success after only a few months. The Times-Picayune’s Emily Woodruff reports that the Family Connects program has served more than 300 moms and babies so far, and is open to anyone who gives birth at Touro or Ochsner Baptist, regardless of income.
The North Carolina program it’s modeled after translated to big gains for young families. In a study of participants, there was a 44% lower rate of child protective services investigations for abuse and neglect through age two. Moms were 30% less likely to experience postpartum depression or anxiety. Emergency room visits and hospital overnights were reduced by 50% in the first year of life, resulting in a reduction of $3.17 in hospital billing costs for every $1 spent on the program.
Selective justice in the Crescent City
The city of New Orleans is cracking down on “nuisance crimes” in and around the French Quarter in a coordinated fashion, using metropolitan police, public works staffers and even the State Police to harass tarot card readers, buskers, unhoused people and other marginalized people. Gambit’s John Stanton writes that the crackdown comes as people with power and influence continue to slide by unscathed.
Meanwhile, over in the Central Business District, Plaza Tower continues to collapse in slow-motion, and the long neglected naval base in Bywater (where the anti-unhoused sweeps took place) rots away in peace, twin monuments to the city’s lack of interest in using its power to fix problems. And in an almost too-perfect-to-be-true twist, as the city was rousting second graders playing buckets for tourists, the Sewerage & Water Board’s poor planning plunged New Orleans into a two-day, near citywide boil water advisory which may or may not have been caused by a stray mylar balloon.
Selective inflation
The U.S. economy got some good news last week when the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that inflation cooled to 2.9% in July, a three-year low that will likely clear the way for the Federal Reserve to start cutting interest rates next month. As the Wall Street Journal’s Harriet Torry and Terell Wright report, prices are steady or falling for products and services such as cars, airline tickets and shampoo, but they are still rising too quickly in other areas.
Rent and electricity bills are up 10% or more over the past two years, and car-insurance costs are up nearly 40%, according to the Labor Department’s index. … Overall consumer prices have increased 6% since June 2022, when inflation hit its recent high. Services—which include such things as dental cleanings, haircuts and eldercare—have risen nearly twice as fast. That is partly because dentists, salons and nursing homes have had to increase wages for their own workers, who are also dealing with rising prices.
Number of the Day
680,023 – Public school enrollment in Louisiana as of February 2024, including charters. Total enrollment has declined by 5% (36,393) since 2020, and has also dropped for private schools, while the number of students being homeschooled is climbing. (Source: Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana)