Most Americans don't want the government to send checks to families forever, survey finds

A youngster wearing a mask looks at the camera while sitting on his father's shoulder in Central Park on May 24, 2020 in New York City. — The first expanded child tax credit checks will be sent out to families on July 15.
Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images

A Morning Consult/Politico survey found 52% of voters don't want permanent monthly checks for families.
54% support Biden's child tax credit, which sends up to $300 monthly checks to families with kids.
Many Democrats are pushing for it to be permanent, but passing it through Congress will be hard.
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The first batch of $300 monthly payments for children, known as the child tax credit, was just sent out to families last week as part of President Joe Biden's stimulus law. While they are set to hit families' bank accounts for the next five months, some Democrats want the payments to be permanent.

The majority of voters don't want that.

A Morning Consult/Politico survey released on Wednesday found that while 54% of voters support the government sending up to $3oo per month to families with children, 52% think the payments shouldn't be permanent. For six months, families can get a $300 monthly benefit per child age 5 and under, amounting to $3,600 this year, along with $250 each month per child age 6 and 17, totaling $3,000.

The survey said that the 52% figure could be problematic for Democrats, who want the benefit to be made permanent as part of their $3.5 trillion budget to be pursued via budget reconciliation.

Here are the other main findings of the survey:

75% of Democrats support the child tax credit, while 31% of Republicans support it;
55% of Democrats think the payments should be permanent, while 16% of Republicans think so;
And 49% of voters with kids said they have already received the first payment.

The survey was conducted from July 16 to 18 among 1,997 registered voters.

These monthly payments for families are a significant achievement for the architects of the credit, like Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet. In March, Bennet led 40 of his Democratic colleagues in urging Biden in a letter to make the monthly allowances permanent, saying that allowing the benefits to expire "would result in a significant spike in child poverty."

But as Insider's Joseph Zeballos-Roig reported, a permanent expansion will not be easy to pass through Congress. Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine who caucuses with Democrats, told Insider that making the credit permanent would not be "a prudent use of the taxpayers' money."

And Sen. John Tester of Montana told Insider that expanding the credit "has merit," but spokesperson for his office later said that "there has to be a discussion about the best way to do that."

But Democrats who support the permanent expansion remain adamant that it would be an important investment that will significantly help American families.

"It's going to be an amazing moment in modern America where people actually see themselves and their families benefiting dramatically from something that we've done in Washington DC," Bennet said in an interview. "It's going to make a huge difference to people."

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