JD Vance says he wants to help families, but missed vote to expand child tax credit

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance proposed more than doubling the federal child tax credit to $5,000 over the weekend, but recently missed the chance to vote for an expanded credit—an effort his fellow Senate Republicans blocked.

Less than two weeks after he failed to show up for a Senate vote on whether to expand the child tax credit to provide more support to families with kids, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance has proposed more than doubling the credit to $5,000 per year. 

“I don’t think that you want this massive cutoff for lower-income families, which you have right now,” he said during an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation over the weekend. 

Vance is referring to the current child tax credit, which has an existing maximum of $2,000 per child. He did not offer any further specifics on who exactly would qualify for an expanded tax credit, however. 

Vance’s new proposal may also be dead on arrival with his own party, as his fellow Senate Republicans opposed the recent proposal which would have expanded the credit and provided some tax breaks for businesses.

Specifically, the bill would have made the child tax credit fully available to low-income families by gradually making more of the credit refundable. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, doing so would have lifted as many as 500,000 American families out of poverty. 

The bill also would have restored full, immediate deductions that businesses can take for the purchase of new equipment and for research and development expenses. These tax breaks lapsed under provisions of the 2017 tax bill put forth by the Trump administration. 

The vote was 48-44, well short of the 60-vote threshold needed to bypass the Senate filibuster, with nearly every Republican senator voting against it. Vance himself missed the vote, and instead visited the US-Mexico border in Arizona. 

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Shumer accurately predicted that most Republicans would vote against the bill, even as they “say they care about families.”

“Senate Republicans love to talk about how they are the party of family and business. So it’s very odd to see them come out so aggressively against expanding the child tax credit and rewarding business with the [research and development] tax credit,” Schumer said on the floor of the Senate.

Vance’s absence also prompted criticism from Democrats who accused him of ditching his senatorial duties to campaign. 

“As it turns out, JD Vance doesn’t care about Americans with children or without,” Democratic National Committee spokesperson Aida Ross said in a statement. “After viciously attacking women and families and disparaging Americans who don’t have children, Vance can’t even be bothered to show up to work today to vote on critical legislation to expand the child tax credit to help Americans with children make ends meet.” 

Vance has tried to depict himself as a populist, pro-family Republican, but those efforts have been overshadowed by a string of controversial remarks that have resurfaced since Donald Trump chose him as his running mate last month. 

Vance has suggested the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas was partly due to “fatherlessness,” blamed America’s issues on the “childless left,” and referred to Democrats as “childless cat ladies.” He has also said in the past that it’s the government’s job to encourage Americans to have more children. 

Vance’s support for families, however, only includes certain kinds of families. During his Senate campaign in July 2022, Vance told Mission America, a right-wing Christian organization based in Ohio, that he would oppose the Respect for Marriage Act if elected. The bill, which was signed into law by President Biden later that year, protects marriages between same-sex and interracial couples at the federal level.

Vance has also repeated false tropes that have increasingly been used by conservatives to describe LGBTQ people as “groomers.” 

Vance has further attacked the rights of women to decide if and when they bring life into this world. He’s said women should be “forced to bring a children to term” in cases of rape and incest, opposes exceptions to abortion bans in cases of rape and incest, and has expressed support for a nationwide abortion ban.

Vance also appeared on ABC and CNN on Sunday, where he further attempted to rehab his image and proposed a lower tax rate for parents than for people without children.

“I’m pro-family,” Vance told CNN. “I want us to have more families. And obviously sometimes it doesn’t work out, sometimes for medical reasons, sometimes because you don’t meet the right person. But the point is that our country has become anti-family in its public policy.”

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, however, immediately criticized Vance for his comments on Monday. She was one of the targets of Vance’s 2021 “childless cat lady” remarks and he also referred to her as having a “sociopathic attitude towards families” that same year.

In response to Vance’s media appearances, Ocasio-Cortez listed on X pro-family policies Democrats have proposed that Republicans have blocked, including raising the minimum wage and expanding parental leave programs and health care access.

“If Vance is so fixated on who has kids, he must support pro-family policies, right?” she wrote. “Oh right, he doesn’t. He just wants an excuse to surveil and subjugate women.”