How House Republicans’ ‘big beautiful’ bill may affect children

House reconciliation legislation, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, includes changes Republican legislators said will boost families’ finances.

Those proposals include $1,000 investment “Trump accounts” for newborns and an enhanced maximum $2,500 child tax credit for eligible parents.

Proposed tax cuts in the bill may also provide up to $13,300 more in take-home pay for the average family with two children, House Republicans estimated.

“What we’re trying to do is help hardworking Americans who are trying to provide for their families and make ends meet,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said during a June 8 interview with ABC News’ “This Week.”

Yet the proposed changes, which emphasize work requirements, may reduce aid for children in low-income families when it comes to certain tax credits, health coverage and food assistance.

Households in the bottom 10% of income distribution would lose about $1,600 per year, or about 3.9% of their income, from 2026 through 2034, according to a June 12 letter from the Congressional Budget Office. That loss is mainly due to “reductions in in-kind transfers,” it notes — particularly Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps.

House Republicans have proposed increasing the maximum child tax credit to $2,500 per child, up from $2,000, a change that would go into effect starting with tax year 2025 and expire after 2028.

There are 17 million children whose parents receive either no child tax credit or a partial credit because their income is too low, and the House Republicans’ plan would add 3 million to that number, according to Adam Ruben, director of advocacy organization Economic Security Project Action.

The child tax credit is not refundable. This means low-income families who pay little or no tax can’t take a $2,500 per-child credit on their tax bill, because they don’t owe that much in taxes.

Consequently, 20 million children would be left out of the benefits of the full child tax credit because their families earn too little, Ruben said.

“It is raising the credit for wealthier families while excluding those vulnerable families from the credit,” Ruben said. “And that’s not a pro-family policy.”

A single parent with two children would have to earn at least $40,000 per year to access the full child tax credit under the Republicans’ plan, he said. For families earning the minimum wage, it may be difficult to meet that threshold, according to Ruben.

In contrast, an enhanced child tax credit put in place under President Joe Biden made it fully refundable, which means very low-income families were eligible for the maximum benefit, according to Elaine Maag, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

In 2021, the maximum child tax credit was $3,600 for each child under age six and $3,000 for each child age 6 to 17. That enhanced credit cut child poverty in half, Maag said. Immediately after it expired, child poverty increased, she said.

The current House proposal would also affect about 4.5 million children who are U.S. citizens but whose families are ineligible for the child tax credit because at least one parent is undocumented and files tax returns with an individual tax identification number, Ruben said. An ITIN is a tax processing number “only available for certain nonresident and resident aliens, their spouses, and dependents who cannot get a Social Security Number,” according to the IRS.

Those families are currently eligible for the child tax credit based on 2017 tax legislation but would be excluded based on the new proposal, Ruben said.

House Republicans also want to change the earned income tax credit, or EITC, which is designed for low- to middle-income individuals and families, to require precertification to qualify.

When a similar requirement was tried about 20 years ago, it resulted in some eligible families not getting the benefit, Maag said. The new prospective administrative barrier may have the same result, she said.

House Republican lawmakers’ plan includes almost $300 billion in proposed cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, through 2034.

SNAP currently helps more than 42 million people in low-income families afford groceries, according to Katie Bergh, senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Children represent about 40% of SNAP participants, she said.

More than 7 million people may see their food assistance either substantially reduced or ended entirely due to the proposed cuts in the House reconciliation bill, the CBPP estimates. That total includes more than 2 million children.

“We’re talking about the deepest cut to food assistance ever, potentially, if this bill becomes law,” Bergh said.

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Under the House proposal, work requirements would apply to households with children for the first time, Bergh said. Parents with children over the age of 6 would be subject to those rules, which limit people to receiving food assistance for just three months in a three-year period unless they work a minimum of 20 hours per week.

Additionally, the House plan calls for states to fund 5% to 25% of SNAP food benefits — a departure from the 100% federal funding for those benefits for the first time in the program’s history, Bergh said.

States, which already pay to help administer SNAP, may face tough choices given those higher costs. That may include cutting food assistance or other state benefits or even doing away with SNAP altogether, Bergh said.

While the bill does not directly propose cuts to school meal programs, it does put children’s eligibility for them at risk, according to Bergh. Children who are eligible for SNAP typically automatically qualify for free or reduced school meals. If a family loses SNAP benefits, their children may also miss out on those benefits at school, Bergh said.

Families with children may face higher health-care costs and reduced access to health care depending on how states react to federal spending cuts proposed by House Republicans, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The House Republican bill seeks to slash approximately $1 trillion in spending from Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP.

Some states expanded Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Medicaid work requirements may make low-income individuals vulnerable to losing health coverage if they are part of the expansion group and are unable to document they meet the requirements or qualify for an exemption, according to the CBPP. Parents and pregnant women, who are on the list of exemptions, could be susceptible to losing coverage without proper documentation, according to the nonpartisan research and policy institute.

Eligible children may face barriers to accessing Medicaid and CHIP coverage if the legislation blocks a rule that simplifies enrollment in those programs, according to the CBPP.

In addition, an estimated 4.2 million people may be uninsured in 2034 if enhanced premium tax credits that help individuals and families afford health insurance are not extended, according to the CBO. Those who are covered by marketplace plans would have to pay higher premiums, according to the CBPP. Without the premium tax credits, a family of four with $65,000 in income would pay $2,400 more per year for marketplace coverage.