Mitt Romney Proposes $350 Monthly Payments For Children - Forbes

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If Mitt Romney’s new plan becomes law, you may get up to $350 cash each month for every child that you have.

Here’s what you need to know.

Stimulus Package

Romney (R-UT) proposed new legislation, The Family Security Act, that would provide monthly cash payments to families with children and revamp the child tax credit. Here’s how it would work:

$350 monthly payments for a child 5 years old and under
$250 monthly payments for a child age 6 to 17
A family can receive a maximum monthly payment of $1,250, or $15,000 a year
The payments begin to phase out above $200,000 (individuals) and $400,000 (married/joint filers) of annual income
Any child with a Social Security Number is eligible
A parent can apply four months before a child’s due date
Romney’s proposal would replace the existing tax credit

“American families are facing greater financial strain, worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, and marriage and birth rates are at an all-time low,” Romney said. “On top of that, we have not comprehensively reformed our family support system in nearly three decades, and our changing economy has left millions of families behind. Now is the time to renew our commitment to families to help them meet the challenges they face as they take on most important work any of us will ever do—raising our society’s children. This proposal offers a path toward greater security for America’s families by consolidating the many complicated programs to create a monthly cash benefit for them, without adding to the deficit.”

How Romney would pay for his child tax credit proposal

Romney would fund this proposal to reduce childhood poverty by eliminating, among other things:

Child and Dependent Care tax credit;
Head of Household filing status;
State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction;
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF); and
simplifying the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)

The Social Security Administration would send monthly payments, and then taxpayers would make any necessary adjustments on their annual income tax return.

The latest on the stimulus package

Congressional Democrats may like Romney’s proposal for monthly payments for families with children, which Romney says will cut childhood poverty by one-third. However, they likely would object to how Romney wants to fund the proposal, namely by eliminating or reducing several tax credits that Democrats support. Will this proposal be included in the new stimulus package? Congress is debating the new stimulus package, which could include stimulus checks, unemployment insurance, among other economic stimuli, including even student loan cancellation. Democrats want to include an expanded child tax credit in the new stimulus package. If Romney is open to changing how his proposal would be funded, Democrats and Republicans may be able to craft a bipartisan plan to address childhood poverty.