The expanded child tax credit program recently expired after having run from July until December of 2021. The program was put in place as part of of the American Rescue Plan of 2021. Eligible parents of children under the age of 17 were able to request advance payments of up to $300 per child, depending on the child’s age, to be be received on the 15th of each month. Now that the program has expired, families who took advantage of the program are having to get used to going back to the way the program was handled before the waves of pandemic relief were handed out. The Build Back Better Act had a provision to further extend the program in some of its many versions, but we all know what happened to that bill. NBC News was one of many media outlets that began interviewing angry parents describing various hardships they have encountered with the termination of the program.

Between July and December, the expanded child tax credit provided parents a cross the United States a small financial reprieve from the pandemic’s economic turbulence. On the 15th of each month, parents who signed up received payments of up to $300 per child under age 6 and $250 per child ages 6 to 17.

Many said it gave their families a little room to breathe…

The expiration of that benefit, however, and Congress’ inability to pass the Build Back Better agenda that would have cemented the child tax credit for an additional year has left many parents in the U.S. — particularly those struggling to make ends meet in the pandemic’s choppy economy — overwhelmed.

I’m sure that a lot of people benefitted from the program during the pandemic and putting it into place was the right thing to do. After all, the government (at all levels) was responsible for shutting down the economy and sending people to the unemployment lines all across the nation. The government (with a lot of help from the teachers’ unions) was responsible for closing the schools to in-person learning, leaving many families without childcare options and needing to figure out how to have their children attend classes “virtually.” It was not unreasonable for the government to take steps during a declared state of emergency to make it easier for families suddenly thrust into these situations to deal with the changes and the stress.

But now those conditions have largely passed. Employers are mostly back open and many are offering higher pay rates and benefits in an effort to attract workers. Most of the schools are open, despite ongoing debates and protests over mask and vaccination policies. In short, the conditions that made the expanded child tax credit a laudable decision have largely passed as well.

Further, if you read the details of the program, it becomes clear that those payments were never really “extra” money to begin with. In fact, the actual name of the program was the “Advance Child Tax Credit Payments” program. Families were receiving “in advance,” a portion of the child tax credit they would have been eligible for when they filed their taxes this year anyway. So many of them will discover that not only are they no longer getting a monthly payment, but they won’t get nearly as much of the child tax credit they normally did in previous years.

This was never a program that was intended to run forever and it wasn’t designed to be some sort of permanent guaranteed basic income plan. It was an advance. But now there are advocates saying that not only should it be extended under the Build Back Better Act, but it should be made permanent. This is how the social services “addiction” (for lack of a better word) among liberal activists takes root. If you get people used to getting a check from the government every month, they aren’t going to want that spigot to be turned off, even if they don’t fully understand where the money is coming from and the total impact it will have on them at tax time. This can’t be turned into some type of permanent welfare program because there is simply no way to pay for it and we’re already drowning in debt as a nation.

We saw the same thing with the rent and mortgage assistance programs passed as part of the COVID relief plans and the eviction moratoriums. They were never intended to make your financial obligations go away forever. They were put in place to keep people from falling disastrously behind because of the pandemic and the closure of the economy. The same theory applies to the student loan “pause” that was enacted. People got used to not making those payments and now the progressives in Congress are demanding that all of that debt simply be canceled forever. The impact that would have on the financial system would be staggering.

There are only so many trillions that you can pick from the magical money tree in the Rose Garden. Everything has limits. People keep saying they want the pandemic to be behind us and for life to get back to normal. I want that as well. But “normal” life also includes paying your bills and meeting your responsibilities as you always needed to do. There are already many social safety net programs in place to help those in dire need, but that net only holds so many people before it collapses.