EXCLUSIVE — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Sen. Rick Santorum, and other pro-family conservatives are calling on congressional leadership to include a bigger child tax credit in the massive fiscal overhaul Republicans are planning.
In a letter addressed to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), the group of 31 former lawmakers, conservative intellectuals, and influential pro-family individuals called upon the House and Senate to build on recent expansions to the child tax credit while indexing the benefit to inflation.
Conservative Leader CTC Letter – April 2025 by web-producers on Scribd
Congress is working on a major fiscal overhaul that Republicans plan to pass through budget reconciliation, a legislative process that allows for bills to bypass the filibuster and pass with only a simple majority in the Senate. The group is hoping that a child tax credit expansion is included in that legislation.
The credit was previously doubled as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, also known as the Trump tax cuts. Since then, however, the power of the credit has decreased due to inflation.
“The child tax credit is one of the best ways to ease the increasing costs of raising a family,” Santorum told the Washington Examiner. “President Trump’s doubling of the credit in 2017 came at a critical time for working families, but inflation has eroded the value of that good work. I’m encouraged that the president and Congress have expressed interest in putting families first by permanently bolstering this critical policy.”
The signatories noted that to keep up with inflation, the current $2,000 child tax credit should be readjusted up to at least $2,500. They also told Johnson and Thune that it should be made permanent and indexed to inflation so that its value continues to grow alongside inflation each year.
“There are additional ways to strengthen the credit and we encourage you to consider those as well, but these two changes are necessary simply to maintain the integrity and value of the TCJA’s good work on the issue,” the letter reads.
Republicans have become increasingly willing to expand family programs such as the child tax credit.
The more populist wing of the party has argued that supporting families is essential to arrest the decline in birth rates. For instance, in interviews with the Washington Examiner, both Kari Lake, who ran for Senate in Arizona, and Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) brought up the issue.
The total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman will have in her lifetime, plummeted to 1.62 in 2023, the lowest level in a century, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The rate has trended down since 2007, when the total fertility rate reached the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman. Demographers define the replacement rate as the number of births that will keep a population stable, with no growth or decline.
Vice President JD Vance is among the Republicans who have pushed for a boosted child tax credit.
“I’d love to see a child tax credit that’s $5,000 per child,” Vance said on CBS while on the campaign trail. “President Trump has been on the record for a long time supporting a bigger child tax credit, and I think you want it to apply to all American families.”
Some Republican lawmakers are already pushing for a boosted child tax credit in reconciliation.
For instance, Rep. Blake Moore (R-UT) is pushing for his plan to more than double the child tax credit to be included in the legislative vehicle.
But notably, a bigger child tax credit was left off of the White House’s list of tax priorities, which was released in February.
Among those priorities were eliminating taxes on tips, ending taxes on Social Security, eliminating taxes on overtime pay, adjusting the state and local tax deduction cap, removing special tax breaks for billionaire sports team owners, closing the carried interest tax deduction “loophole,” and introducing tax cuts for made-in-America products.
The biggest priority for the White House, though, is the overall extension of the TCJA. While the White House did not specifically mention a push to expand the child tax credit from its current $2,000 level, if the tax cuts are extended, it would stop the credit from reverting to the $1,000 level, where it was before the TCJA was signed into law.
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Signatories of the Wednesday letter to Johnson and Thune hope that Congress will take the latest opportunity with reconciliation to move beyond merely extending the child tax credit and expand it.
“The current debate on extending the provisions of the TCJA under budget reconciliation instructions is a critical moment for this foundational issue,” the letter reads. “This process will establish an important marker on tax priorities, and we are eager to support your continued prioritization of the family and therefore the strength of our great nation.”
