An outside economic adviser to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said this week that he has "doubts" about the Child Tax Credit, a program that Democratic lawmakers and President Joe Biden expanded in 2021—briefly slashing the nation's childhood poverty rate in half.
Heritage Foundation fellow Stephen Moore, a co-author of the far-right Project 2025 agenda, said in a C-SPANappearance on Monday that the Child Tax Credit (CTC) "worries" him because "we can't just keep giving people money"—an argument that he doesn't seem to apply to wealthy individuals and profitable corporations.
Moore proceeded to trot out a well-worn and debunked right-wing case against the credit and other benefits for lower-income households, saying that "if we keep just passing out free money to people, you're going to discourage people from working."
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Moore, whom Trump once selected for a seat on the board of the Federal Reserve, is an outspoken champion of further slashing the corporate tax rate. The Washington Postreported last year that Moore personally urged Trump to support reducing the corporate rate from 21% to 15%, a change that would hand the nation's 100 largest companies an annual tax break of nearly $50 billion.
Additionally, the Project 2025 agenda that Moore helped craft would cut taxes for households making more than $10 million a year while raising taxes on the typical family of four, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the Center for American Progress (CAP).
"Project 2025's new tax bracket system," wrote CAP's Brendan Duke, "represents an enormous shift of the tax burden from wealthy tax filers to middle-income tax filers."
Project 2025 also calls for tax reform that "eliminates most deductions, credits, and exclusions," without specifically mentioning the CTC.
While the Trump campaign has unconvincingly sought to distance itself from Project 2025 as it becomes increasingly clear that the U.S. public widely opposes it, Moore has described the agenda as a "dream scenario."
"Donald Trump and his Project 2025 allies are hellbent on raising taxes on working families, while promising handouts to their billionaire donors."
Democratic nominee Kamala Harris' campaign seized on Moore's C-SPAN appearance on Wednesday, saying in a statement that "Trump's economic adviser is openly trashing a tax cut for working families that lifted millions of children out of poverty."
"Donald Trump and his Project 2025 allies are hellbent on raising taxes on working families, while promising handouts to their billionaire donors," said Joseph Costello, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign. "In stark contrast, Vice President Harris is fighting to cut taxes to put thousands of dollars back in the pockets of working families."
Moore's comments on the CTC came roughly two weeks after Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Trump's running mate, expressed support for more than doubling the tax credit, which in its current form provides up to $2,000 per child annually to families that qualify.
But last month, Vance skipped a vote on legislation that would have expanded the CTC, opting instead to visit the U.S.-Mexico border for a photo-op.
"If JD Vance sincerely gave a whit about working families in America, he would have shown up," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said of Vance in a statement earlier this month. "Bottom line, the guy's a phony."
