Trump adviser who loves corporate gifts says he has ‘doubts’ about child tax credit

An outside economic adviser to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said this week he had “doubts” about the child tax credit, a program that Democratic lawmakers and President Joe Biden expanded in 2021 – briefly cutting child poverty in the country in half.

Stephen Moore, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation and co-author of the far-right agenda “Project 2025,” said in a C-SPANDuring his appearance on Monday, he said he was “worried” about the Child Tax Credit (CTC) because “we can't just keep giving people money” – an argument he apparently cannot apply to wealthy individuals and profitable corporations.

Moore went on to make a familiar and debunked argument from the right against the tax credit and other benefits for low-income households: “If we continue to just give people free money, we're going to discourage them from working.”

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Moore, whom Trump once nominated for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board, is an outspoken advocate of further corporate tax cuts. The Washington PostLast year, it was reported that Moore personally pushed Trump to support a cut in the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%, a change that would provide the nation's 100 largest corporations with an annual tax break of nearly $50 billion.

In addition, the Project 2025 program Moore helped design would cut taxes for households with annual incomes of more than $10 million while increasing taxes on typical families of four, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the Center for American Progress (CAP).

“Project 2025’s new tax bracket system,” wrote CAP’s Brendan Duke, “represents a huge shift in the tax burden from wealthy taxpayers to middle-income taxpayers.”

Project 2025 also calls for tax reform that “eliminates most deductions, credits and exclusions” without specifically mentioning the CTC.

While the Trump team is making unconvincing attempts to distance itself from Project 2025 as widespread opposition among the US public becomes increasingly clear, Moore calls the agenda a “dream scenario.”

“Donald Trump and his Project 2025 allies are hell-bent on raising taxes on working families while promising handouts to their billionaire donors.”

The campaign of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris attacked Moore’s C-SPAN He said in a statement: “Trump's economic adviser is openly denigrating a tax cut for working families that has lifted millions of children out of poverty.”

“Donald Trump and his Project 2025 allies are hell-bent on raising taxes on working families while promising handouts to their billionaire donors,” said Joseph Costello, a spokesman for the Harris campaign. “In stark contrast, Vice President Harris is fighting for tax cuts to put thousands of dollars back into the pockets of working families.”

Moore's comments on the CTC came about two weeks after Senator JD Vance (R-Ohio), Trump's running mate, expressed support for more than doubling the tax credit, which in its current form provides qualifying families with up to $2,000 per child annually.

But last month, Vance skipped a vote on a bill that would have expanded the CTC, opting instead to visit the U.S.-Mexico border for a photo shoot.

“If JD Vance cared even a little about working families in America, he would have shown up,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said of Vance in a statement earlier this month. “The bottom line is that the guy is a fraud.”