Child Tax Credit Money Begins Hitting Local Bank Accounts

Pasadena families began receiving $300 checks for each child under age 6, and $250 for each child aged 6 to 17 on Thursday as part of the federal Child Tax Credit program.

The program is expected to benefit 1.1 million children in Los Angeles County.

“This has been such a tough year for so many families, with COVID threatening lives, closing down businesses, causing unemployment,” said U.S. Rep. Judy Chu, D-Pasadena. “It’s been tough to pay for food and rent. So we knew we had to make our top priority helping working families.”

The Child Tax Credit has been in place since 1997, but it was originally capped at $2,000 per child each year. The American Rescue Plan lifted the cap to $3,600 for children younger than 6, and $3,000 for those aged 6-17. The payments have only been enhanced for one year.

The full payments will go to households earning up to $150,000 a year, with lower amounts provided to families with higher incomes.

“Tens of thousands of children will be lifted out of poverty,”

Speaker of House Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, said during the visit to Barrio Action Youth and Family Center in El Sereno.

Pelosi said that when she’s asked about the “most important issues facing the Congress, I always say the same thing: our children, our children, our children.”

The checks are being mailed and placed in bank accounts via direct deposit.

President Joe Biden said payments have the potential to reduce child poverty in the same way Social Security reduced poverty among the elderly.

“It’s one of the largest-ever single tax cuts for families with children, and it’s a reflection of our belief that the people of this country who need a tax cut aren’t the folks at the top,” Biden said.

“They’ve got plenty of tax cuts. They’re doing just fine. But it’s the people in the middle, the folks who are struggling, who are just looking for a little bit of — my dad would say, ‘a little bit of breathing room.’ A little bit of breathing room,” the president said.