Advocates for a state child tax credit already have enough support, at least on paper, to send a bill to Gov. Ned Lamont’s desk.

They’re hoping the growing number of legislators in favor of such a plan, coupled with heightened sensitivity to Connecticut’s high cost of living, will bring their six-year struggle to a successful conclusion this spring.

But the final test won’t come until late April and early May, when top leaders of the legislature’s Democratic majority negotiate a final state budget for the next fiscal year with Lamont, whose top choices for tax relief don’t include a child-based credit.

A proven mechanism for helping families

The Committee on Children approved a bill Thursday that would establish a $600-per-child credit, up to $1,800 per household for the current tax year, which means eligible families could claim the relief with state returns filed in early 2027.

That bill largely mirrors another measure proposed to the committee earlier this session by 23 of the 25 majority Democrats in the 36-member Senate. In other words, more than half in that chamber back the plan.

And a third nearly identical child tax credit proposal is pending before the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee. It has the backing of 76 Democratic representatives, or just over half of the 151-member House.

“We saw how it lifted families out of poverty during COVID,” Sen. Ceci Maher, D-Wilton, co-chairwoman of the children’s committee, said. “It’s been proven: It’s a mechanism for helping families.”

Maher was referring to Congress’ decision in 2021 to expand the federal credit from $2,000 to $3,000 per child — and in some cases $3,600 — but just for one year.

An estimated 604,000 Connecticut children lived in households that received this enhanced credit. And according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington, D.C.-based policy group, about 80,000 lived in homes that slipped below the poverty line, or deeper into poverty, after it expired.

“Families will tell you that many expenses of raising a child are non-negotiable — car seats, new shoes, child care, doctors’ visits to keep kids healthy,” said Lisa Tepper Bates, president and CEO of the United Way of Connecticut. “Those costs are going up as prices continues to rise and key federal benefits are cut.”

Connecticut families lost hundreds of millions of dollars this January when federal tax credits that helped them purchase health insurance on the state exchange expired. Lamont and the General Assembly offset a portion of that loss using an estimated $117 million from state reserves.

Still, all of Connecticut’s neighboring states except for Rhode Island offer a state income tax-based credit to offset the costs of raising children, and Bates noted that Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee proposed his state’s first child tax credit earlier this winter.

New measures of households’ financial needs

The United Way of Connecticut is one of the policy groups spearheading the push for a child tax credit here. Its annual poverty metric has become one of the driving points in that campaign.

The nonprofit offers its ALICE methodology — an acronym for Asset-Limited, Income-Constrained [and] Employed — as an alternative to the Federal Poverty Level, a longstanding metric increasingly criticized by policymakers as outdated and misleading.

The United Way estimates it cost a family of four — two parents and two children — $116,000 to cover basic “survival” needs, including food, housing, utilities, child and health care and transportation in 2023. About 40% of Connecticut households fail to cover a survival budget.

By comparison, the Federal Poverty Level is a relatively simple metric developed in the mid-1960s by U.S. Social Security Administration economists and based largely on the cost of a minimum food diet. A family of four earning more than $30,000 was considered above the poverty line in 2023. A family of two had to make more than $19,720.

But more organizations besides the United Way are taking a radically different assessment of poverty.

The Urban Institute, a nonprofit economic and social policy research group, found that a family of four in the northeastern U.S. needed to earn close to $151,100 in 2022 to be economically secure.

Last week, the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, nonpartisan think-tank, released its latest Family Budget Calculator to demonstrate what households in every county nationally needed to earn last year to cover “basic expenses.”

The threshold for two adults with two children in Connecticut ranged from $131,189 in Windham County to $163,928 in Fairfield County.

“This data confirms what our ALICE report, researchers at MIT and the Urban Institute, and hardworking Connecticut families have been saying,” Bates added. “Wages have not kept pace with the real cost of living. Families with young children are the core of our workforce, and Connecticut continues to struggle in keeping working-age people here and drawing new working-age families to our state.”

The calculator is designed “to show what it takes for families to get by at a very adequate-but-modest level of living,” said Zane Mokhiber, EPI’s director of data management and analysis, who added it doesn’t reflect a poverty lifestyle but “not exactly a middle-class lifestyle” either.

Child tax credit must compete with other relief plans

But advocates for a Connecticut child tax credit aren’t the only ones insisting affordability has become an issue here.

Lamont, a fiscally moderate Democrat, hasn’t argued against the child tax credit but has shown a preference for relief that reaches more households.

More than 250,000 families received a trial $250-per-child tax rebate in 2022. The state income tax rate cuts Lamont signed in 2023 assisted roughly one million filers, according to the administration.

The governor is asking legislators to approve a sales tax rebate program that would send $200 to about 2.2 million residents.

“The affordability crisis our nation faces due to international uncertainty, worsened by President Trump’s actions in Iran, tariffs, and other macroeconomic factors, affects everyone, regardless of whether they have children,” Lamont’s budget spokesman, Chris Collibee, said Friday. “Those just starting their careers, empty nesters and seniors should be able to receive relief because of a strong stock market. The governor is committed to working with legislative leaders to find solutions that reduce costs for all Connecticut residents.”

The administration also notes it took big steps in recent years to assist families, launching a $300 million endowment to expand affordable child care and boosting Connecticut’s income tax credit for the working poor if those households have children or other dependents.

Minority Republicans in the Senate and House also favor other types of relief over a child tax credit.

“Republicans want broader-based tax relief that touches as many people in as even-handed a way as possible,” said Sen. Ryan Fazio of Greenwich, ranking GOP senator on the finance committee and a contender for his party’s gubernatorial nomination. “I think everybody deserves relief.”

Republicans in both chambers have outlined several tax-cutting proposals. The Senate GOP last week called for an unprecedented $1.5 billion in state tax cuts, most involving income tax rates and credits. House Republicans want to return $500 million annually to the middle class by expanding an income tax credit that offsets a portion of municipal property tax bills.

Many Republicans also are concerned about this year’s child tax credit proposals, Fazio said, because they are defined as “refundable” credits. That means even if a household with children earns so little it has no state income tax liability to apply the credit to, it still would have $600 per child added to its refund.

Connecticut already has one of the largest income tax credits for the working poor, Fazio added, complemented by a healthy social services safety net.