An important new tax bill that would expand the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and restore some corporate tax breaks passed the House this evening on a 357-70 vote, a rare show of bipartisanship that the House has struggled to muster up over the last year.
The bill, known as the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act, was the culmination of several months’ negotiations between House and Senate leaders. It will now head to the Senate; if it passes there, it would be the first major piece of tax legislation to make it through Congress this session.
“The Child Tax Credit is essential to helping children and families,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff) said. “That, for me, is the most important thing… I think we will still have work to do after we get this done, but I think this is a great down payment.”
Gottheimer was one of nine New Jersey representatives to support the bill, while a tenth, Rep. Donald Norcross (D-Camden), was not present for the vote. But two New Jersey congressmen, Reps. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch) and Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), voted against the bill – for very different reasons.
Pallone said that while he was very supportive of expanding the CTC, he felt the bill did not go far enough and was too heavily tilted towards corporate tax cuts.
“Democrats have shown that the best way to lift kids out of poverty is by expanding the child tax credit,” he said on social media. “I voted against the tax deal today because it falls short of what’s needed to help lift low-income families out of poverty and gives lopsided benefits to corporations.”
Kean, meanwhile, focused his ire on the State and Local Tax deduction cap, which limited the amount of money taxpayers in high-tax states could deduct; the cap has been hated by New Jersey’s suburban representatives ever since it was implemented under President Donald Trump in 2018. Kean and some of his fellow blue-state Republicans tried to get House GOP leadership to include some form of SALT relief in the bill, to no avail, though a separate vote on SALT may be coming sometime in the future.
“I kept my promise to the New Jerseyans I represent,” Kean said in a statement. “On a bill that does not raise the SALT cap deduction, I am a NO vote. Although I support numerous provisions in this bill, such as the Child Tax Credit, [research and development] tax incentive, and disaster relief, a fix for SALT is not in this package.”
Kean was far from the only New Jersey representative to grumble about the bill’s lack of SALT – but he was the only one to let the issue dictate his vote on the bill.
“I wish that there was SALT, it’s not in there,” Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester) said shortly before voting yes. “So that’s a disappointment. But I’m not going to vote against these other very very important provisions because of that.”
The SALT cap isn’t far off from becoming a moot issue anyways, since it’s set to expire at the end of 2025. Unless Congress passes legislation extending it further, that deadline eases some of the pressure on members of Congress who want it gone; there’s less need to make an unfavorable deal on the SALT cap now if it won’t last much longer regardless.
“We should not take one-tenth measures,” Gottheimer said. “We should not take one grain of SALT when we can get the whole SALT shaker.”