In recent months, the new and expanded child tax credits—which allow eligible parents to collect $250 or $300 for each child every month through the end of the year—are grabbing most of the headlines.  

These direct payments have been shown to feed millions of families and pull children out of poverty across the country. But it appears that the hope to land another round or two of stimulus checks isn’t entirely dead yet. 

Stephanie Bonin, a Colorado restaurant owner and the orchestrator of the highly popular Change.org petition that has amassed nearly three million signatures, is now pressing Congress not to “ghost” struggling American families and quickly approve measures to make the child tax credit permanent.  

“Being ignored, being left behind or worse being shown love and then it is taken away. All things we now describe as . . . being ghosted. Don’t ghost the families of America, Congress!” she writes. 

“This Halloween let’s spread the word that the scariest thing is Congress ghosting America by taking away the checks being sent directly to our families, the expanded Child Care Tax Credits,” she continued.

$2,000 Monthly

Bonin’s Change.org petition, which is only about fifty thousand signatures away from reaching its goal, is “calling on Congress to support families with a $2,000 payment for adults and a $1,000 payment for kids immediately, and continuing regular checks for the duration of the crisis. Otherwise, laid-off workers, furloughed workers, the self-employed, and workers dealing with reduced hours will struggle to pay their rent or put food on the table.” 

Even More Petitions

Do take note that there are six other ongoing petitions demanding recurring monthly stimulus checks until the pandemic ends—and they have altogether garnered more than 1.5 million signatures. 

The largest among these was launched by the Senior Citizens League, a nonpartisan senior group, which is urging Congress to approve another round of stimulus checks that would send out $1,400 payments to only Social Security program beneficiaries.

“Social Security benefits are one of the few types of income in retirement adjusted for inflation. But soaring inflation has taken a toll on household finances of retired and disabled Social Security recipients,” the group stated in its petition. 

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn. 

Image: Reuters