Stephanie McGuffee isn’t officially poverty-guideline-grade poor, but she’s been on the borderline and she’s worked with enough low-income families to know what it’s like.
The single mother of two lives in Olla in LaSalle Parish, in Louisiana’s Central Hill Country, with her son, Colten, 5, and daughter, River, 3. She works as a Cognosante community outreach specialist to support her young family.
When Congress passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in 2021 — with a special COVID-19 opportunity for families like hers to get tax credits of up to $3,600 for each child up to age 6 — McGuffee welcomed the opportunity.
“As a single mother of two with no other assistance, it was something I really needed,” she told me. That unexpected additional income helped ease some of her financial pressures. She bought diapers and groceries. She paid bills. The cushion gave her a bit more quality-of-life time with her family.
The child tax credit, available for low- and middle-income families, also provided $3,000 for each child aged 6 through 17. Families got monthly installments from July through December, and parents were able to claim the other half when filing their 2021 tax returns.
It was easy to predict what would happen. Almost all at once, about 3 million children were lifted out of poverty.
When Congress had the opportunity to continue that support, it refused. What McGuffee and so many others quickly came to rely on was gone in a flash.
“It was like, well crap,” McGuffee recalled. “Once you get that extra income, you get used to it. It sucked when it came to an end.”
Once again, it was easy to predict what would happen. Almost all at once, millions of children were thrown right back into poverty.
Conceptually, we could look at families like McGuffee’s and see the difference — the same difference it made for foster-care client families she saw at the time.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Census Bureau proved the point. After Congress passed President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, the child poverty rate plummeted to 5.2% in 2021.
Because Congress failed to continue Biden’s plan when it expired, the child poverty rate rose to 12.4% in 2022.
Those are the national numbers. Why would Louisiana children be any different?
When the Louisiana Budget Project extrapolated the national supplemental child poverty percentages for our state, LBP found rather sad statistics:
- In 2021, Louisiana's child population was about 1,066,180. Applying the national supplemental child poverty rate of 5.2%, that's about 55,441 in poverty.
- In 2022, Louisiana's child population was about 1,045,700. Applying the national supplemental child poverty rate of 12.4%, that's about 129,665 living in poverty.
That’s more than 74,200 additional Louisiana children living in poverty.
"Since Louisiana's child poverty rate is among the highest in the nation, these numbers are almost certainly an undercount," Stacey Roussel of LBP said. "Estimates from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities show that about 187,000 Louisiana children were at risk of slipping back below the poverty line or deeper into poverty when the national CTC was allowed to expire."
Is that what we want for our state's most vulnerable kids?
The COVID-19 pandemic brought us a great deal of anger, anxiety, frustration, grief and uncertainty. And, death.
It also brought us greater attention to our nation’s poverty rate, especially among children. In the angst of the moment, our leaders did a good thing and provided a safety net for children and teenagers.
But, when the time came to extend the program, they let people like McGuffee down.
“I definitely could’ve predicted that this was going to happen,” she said. “I can make a living and have a roof over our heads, but what about all the other people?”
McGuffee guesses that congressional representatives probably didn't reenact the benefit because they're concerned that some people weren't using the money the way they should. "And that's definitely the case, I know," she said. "But that's not everybody."
McGuffee didn't need the U.S. Census Bureau data to know the negative impact pulling back the child tax credit would have on low- and middle-income families. She just wishes members of Congress would realize that they helped a lot of people — then they hurt them.
