Republican vice presidential candidate and Senator JD Vance wants to increase the child tax credit from the current $2,000 to $5,000 per child, which policy experts say could result in trillions of dollars in additional federal spending.

“I would like to see a child tax credit of $5,000 per child,” Vance said said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Sunday. “President Trump has long been a public advocate for a higher child tax credit, and I think he wants it to apply to all American families.”

Vance’s idea to increase the child tax credit by 150% comes less than two weeks after a bill that would have provided a modest expansion of the tax benefit. failed in the Senate due to Republican opposition. Proponents of an expanded CTC argue that it would help low- and middle-income families cope with the costs of raising a child, but it will also likely impose a high price on the federal government, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan think tank that focuses on fiscal policy issues.

“We could easily be talking about $2 trillion to $3 trillion in additional borrowing over the next decade,” Marc Goldwein, senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told CBS MoneyWatch. “That’s a huge amount.”

However, Vance did not provide many details about how he would expand the CTC, making it difficult to determine the exact cost, Goldwein added. For example, Vance did not reveal whether he envisions a fully refundable $5,000 CTC, meaning people who apply for it could get the entire amount as a tax refund. That would make the CTC more expensive than if it were partially refundable, as the CTC currently is.

Vance indicated that he would like to see the CTC expanded without income limits as the current tax credit expires for singles earning over $200,000 and married couples earning over $400,000.

“They don’t want a different policy for higher-income families,” he noted. “They just want a family-friendly child tax credit.”

No vote on the bill to expand the CTC

Vance, however, did not vote on the failed Senate bill that would have expanded the CTC to provide more benefits to low-income families. When asked about it on “Face the Nation,” Vance called it a “sham vote,” adding that the vote would have failed even if he had been there.

Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon and co-sponsor of the failed bill, said Vance’s no vote undermined his statements in support of an expanded CTC.

“If JD Vance cared deeply about America’s working families, he would have shown up on the Senate floor a week and a half ago and voted for my proposal to increase the child tax credit and help 16 million low-income children get ahead,” Wyden said in a statement Sunday. “He hasn’t even cared enough to use his platform to call on his Republican Senate colleagues to support the proposal.”

How high is the CTC?

The CTC is currently $2,000, but during the pandemic it was temporarily increased, bringing the benefit up to $3,600 per child. This has helped lift more than 2 million children out of poverty, according to U.S. Census data.

But the CTC is about to undergo another big change: In 2026, the tax credit will go back to $1,000 per child. That’s because the credit was doubled to $2,000 per child by former President Donald Trump’s Tax Cuts & Jobs Act, which went into effect in 2018. But many provisions of the TCJA, including the more generous CTC, expire at the end of 2025.

Vance, meanwhile, advocates for measures that would encourage Americans to have more children. But even a 150% increase in the CTC probably won’t make much difference, Goldwein noted.

The costs of raising a child from birth to 18 years of age are about 240,000 US dollarsaccording to a 2023 study. Some countries that have tried to boost their birth rates through payments have had mixed results, such as Australia, which introduced a “baby bonus” about two decades ago. While the birth rate rose in subsequent years, it has since fallen to a lower level than when the benefit was introduced, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

“$5,000 a year will ease the burden, but it won’t cover all the costs,” Goldwein noted. “Financial benefits don’t have a big impact on fertility.”