Senator Josh Hawley is making a bold push in the upcoming 2025 tax debate with a proposal to increase the child tax credit from $2,000 to $5,000 per child, Axios reports, a measure that would provide substantial financial relief to large families, particularly Orthodox Jewish households, which often have many children.

Hawley’s plan, if passed, would dramatically reshape how families access the child tax credit. In addition to increasing the credit to $5,000 per child, the proposal would allow parents to claim the credit for the tax year in which a child is born, starting during the year of the pregnancy itself. This change would help parents manage the significant upfront costs of welcoming a new child into their home.

The proposal is especially significant for Orthodox Jewish families, who traditionally have larger families compared to the national average. The expanded credit could ease the financial burden of raising multiple children, a challenge often compounded by tuition costs for education and other family expenses.

Hawley’s plan also aims to make the child tax credit accessible to more working families by eliminating the $2,500 income minimum required to claim it, while still requiring employment to qualify. Importantly, the proposal would allow families to receive the credit in regular installments throughout the year rather than as a single lump sum during tax season, providing consistent financial support when families need it most.

The Missouri senator stressed that the plan is designed to help working-class families, particularly those who voted for President-elect Donald Trump, and argued that the measure would deliver “real and meaningful tax relief.” Hawley also noted that allowing the credit to be applied to payroll taxes would benefit families who do not earn enough to owe income taxes, ensuring they still receive larger refunds to support their children.

Hawley has discussed the proposal with Trump and his team, citing Vice President-elect J.D. Vance as the inspiration behind the specific $5,000 figure. Both have framed the measure as a way for Republicans to embrace pro-family policies that appeal to working-class voters while strengthening the economy.

The proposal comes at a politically tense time for Republicans, as debates over tax policy heat up ahead of the expiration of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act at the end of 2025. While many Republicans remain divided over expanding the child tax credit, Democrats have been largely supportive of similar initiatives in the past. Hawley was one of just three Senate Republicans to back a bipartisan tax package earlier this year that included a child tax credit expansion, though the measure ultimately failed.

Hawley acknowledged concerns about the significant cost of his proposal—estimated at $2 to $3 trillion over 10 years—but stressed that “these are the folks who delivered us a majority.” He argued that the plan is not a social assistance program, since only working families paying taxes would benefit, and insisted it would be “fantastic for the economy.”

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