WASHINGTON — If you raised children during the pandemic, you probably remember something remarkable: getting checks in the mail, every month, from the federal government.
The expanded child tax credit provided a few hundred dollars to help pay for your son's braces or your daughter's ballet lessons — or to ease the stress over whether you had enough money to cover the mortgage. Then, one day, the checks just stopped coming.
Jessica Hudson used her $500 monthly payments for her 11-year-old son's child care after school while she juggled work and finished a political science degree at San Francisco State. But after the checks stopped, the hours she had devoted to classes were instead spent making stressful calls to coordinate school pick-up or leaving campus early to do it herself.
