36 million families face January without a Child Tax Credit check: "There will be times I won't eat"
CBSN
For the last six months, 36 million families received a monthly check from the IRS through the expanded Child Tax Credit — a cash infusion that helped pay for groceries, buy school uniforms and ease the costs of raising kids. But now, families are facing the first month since July without a check from the government program, even as inflation hits a 40-year high and COVID-19 cases surge.
If President Joe Biden's Build Back Better Act had been passed, families would have received a CTC payment on January 14 (because the 15th is a Saturday, the IRS would have issued the checks on the preceding workday.) But that bill remains in limbo, which means parents will not get a check on Friday.
"The CTC went away, but grocery prices haven't gone down," said Stormy Johnson, 44, a single mother of three in Kingwood, West Virginia, who works as a student support specialist. "Now that I don't have that payment, the reality of life is that there will be times I won't eat to make sure my kids can."
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