Along with those $1,400 stimulus checks, there are a number of significant features in the American Rescue Act that was passed in Congress on a party-line vote and signed into law by President Biden last week that are now getting a closer look.

Among them is the measure that enhances the current child tax credit from $2,000 a year to $3,000 a year, and to $3,600 a year for children under six years of age.

“This is a historic investment that will lift millions of American children out of poverty,” Tampa Democratic Representative Kathy Castor said in a Zoom press call on Monday. 

“The research tells us that a child who experiences, even a short period of poverty during their life, especially in their early years, has less of a chance to succeed in life,” Castor added. “We want to make sure every child across this community has an equal chance to succeed, and that’s what this investment in families will bring.”

The full child tax credit will be available to individuals who earn up to $75,000 annually, and couples earning up to $150,000. From there, the credit will be reduced by $50 for every additional $1,000 of adjusted gross income, according to CNBC.

According to the United Way’s latest ALICE report, in 2018 approximately 13% of households in Florida were living below the Federal Poverty Line (FPL). 

Norin Dollard, Director of Florida KIDS COUNT and research asst. professor for USF’s Dept. of Child and Family Studies, says that if the analysis is correct that these tax credits will lift 40 percent of people out of the current federal poverty guidelines, that’s approximately 100,000 children in Hillsborough County.

“It’s not insignificant,” she said. “We know that even before the pandemic, one in five children were living in poverty in our state and with the pandemic that’s become that much more acute.”

The tax credits have been part of U.S. law since 1997, but they’ve always been non-refundable, meaning that an individual had to have income and pay taxes in order to qualify for a credit. That's no longer the case with the new law.

That provision received the disapproval from Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio.

In recent months, a number of GOP Senators like Rubio and Mitt Romney were also talking about enhancing the child tax credit, but Rubio says not having a link to work to earn the credit makes it "not pro-family."

“If pulling families out of poverty were as simple as handing moms and dads a check, we would have solved poverty a long time ago,” the Florida Republican wrote in an op-ed in the National Review last month. “There is substantially more to lifting families out of poverty than government-provided income, and for decades, there was a bipartisan consensus that work, marriage and community were critical pieces of poverty reduction.”

Congresswoman Castor disagrees.

“If we’re going to lift families and put them on a path to success, that means investing in children and families for a change, not just tax breaks for the wealthiest one percent in this country that was in the GOP (2017 tax) bill,” she said. “Here’s an opportunity to actually invest in children and families. Lift families out of poverty.”

Dollard added that the enhanced credits should not be looked at as a “handout” and simply as an investment “because the return on investment for these families means that they have stable housing so that there is less stress in their lives. They have access to childcare so that they can go work knowing that their children are well cared for.”

Advocates say that the next step is to get the word out to those in the community about how to access these enhanced credits.

Kelley Parris, the executive director for the Hillsborough County Children’s Board, said that her agency will have information at all seven resource centers that the Children’s Board has throughout the county. There will also be outreach to nonprofits and churches.

The extended credits are currently scheduled to expire at the end of 2021. Castor said that she will work to make them permanent. She added that the country puts major resources into funding older Americans via Social Security and Medicare, so now “it’s time to invest in kids for a change.”