Republican vice presidential nominee and Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) is taking heat from the Left for promoting the child tax credit. On Friday, a social media account supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’s bid for the White House shared what it called a “leaked” video of Vance in 2021 promoting the child tax credit (CTC). “In a stunning new leaked video, JD Vance claims that childless adults should pay more in taxes,” the X account Kamala’s Wins declared. “It’s clear JD Vance wants to wage war against Americans.”
Harris’s official X campaign account also shared the video, claiming that Vance “says adults without children should have their taxes raised…”
“We need to reward the things that we think are good and punish the things that we think are bad,” Vance said in the video, which was not “leaked” but was in fact an episode of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” a podcast watched by millions of Americans. “So you talk about tax policy, let’s tax the things that are bad and not tax the things that are good,” Vance continued. “If you’re making $100,000 [to] $400,000 a year and you’ve got three kids, you should pay a different, lower tax rate than if you’re making the same amount of money and you don’t have any kids. It’s that simple.”
The CTC was passed by Congress and signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton in 1997, with the support of Family Research Council. Contrary to Harris’s claims, the CTC does not increase taxes on anyone, but instead offers a tax credit to American parents. The policy has been touted as a broad success and has, over the years, enjoyed bipartisan support, including expansions by both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama.
Even President Joe Biden’s White House has promoted the CTC, calling it “one of the nation’s strongest tools to provide tens of millions of families with some support and breathing room while raising children.” The White House further noted that the CTC “has also [been] shown to be one of the most effective tools ever for lowering child poverty.”
Vance responded to Harris’s criticism over social media, saying, “Most Americans in both political parties support the child tax credit and lowering the tax burden for parents. It’s disturbing that the Kamala campaign is running on such an extreme anti-family agenda that they’re taking radical positions like this.” In an appearance on “The Megyn Kelly Show,” Vance emphasized the Harris campaign’s anti-family positions:
“There’s a deeper point here… It’s not a criticism of people who don’t have children. I explicitly said in my remarks, despite the fact the media has lied about this, that this is not about criticizing people who, for various reasons, didn’t have kids. This is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child. … Why do we have the Harris campaign coming out … and saying that we should not have the Child Tax Credit, which lowers tax rates for parents of young children? It’s because they have become anti-family and anti-kid.”
Harris’s opposition to the CTC has sparked backlash online. Investigative journalist and former U.S. Naval intelligence officer Jack Posobiec commented, “JD Vance just got the entire Democrat Party to come out against the child tax credit and admit they’re anti-family.” Article 3 Project founder and constitutional scholar Mike Davis observed, “Kamala Harris wants to use federal taxpayer dollars to pay for late-term abortions. But Kamala Harris criticizes JD Vance for supporting the federal child tax credit. In other words, she will pay to kill kids. But she won’t pay to raise kids.”
Vance on Saturday shared a resurfaced video clip of Harris at a Reading Area Community College event encouraging young Americans not to have children due to “climate change” and “the fear of the future and the unknown of whether it makes sense for you to even think about having children.” Vance commented, “It’s almost like these people don’t want young people starting families or something. Really weird stuff.”
S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.
