pushed Joi Lansdowne to start toilet training her daughter Kaleasi, who recently turned 2. That way, the mom of two could save money on diapers, which run her about $100 every 10 days or so.
“That is a huge expense,” said Lansdowne, 26, who worked as a case worker for the state of Maryland until the fall and had hoped she’d continue receiving the $300 monthly infusion this year. “When you don’t have the funds to cover those things, you’ve got to get creative.”
Lansdowne, who also cut off cable at her Martinsburg, West Virginia, home to help her afford the mortgage, is looking for a job. But it’s not easy since she’d have to shell out hundreds of dollars a month for child care for Kaleasi and her baby sister, Lalani, who is four months old.
However, President Joe Biden recently acknowledged that the beefed-up credit might wind up on the cutting room floor.
Democratic supporters of the enhanced credit aren’t giving up so easily. Five senators — Michael Bennet of Colorado, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Ron Wyden of Oregon — last week wrote a letter to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris urging them to “secure” an extension of the credit.
“The expanded CTC is a signature domestic policy achievement of this administration and has been an overwhelming success,” wrote the senators. “The consequences of failing to extend the CTC expansion are dire, particularly as families face another wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
“After historic progress, it is unacceptable to return to a status quo in which children are America’s poorest residents and child poverty costs our nation more than $1 trillion per year,” they wrote.
