From WNYC Studios.

I'm Brian Lerer.

This is my daily politics podcast.

It's Wednesday, January 17th.

We actually get to start today with the fact that there may be some surprising good news for a change coming out of Congress,

especially for Americans with children, especially low-income families with children, who

ironically, some of you know this, some of you experienced it, saw child poverty rates drop

dramatically at the start of the pandemic, but have since gone back up.

For more than a year now, Democrats in Congress have been trying to strike a deal with Republicans

to revive the policy known as the child tax credit, or at least extend the child tax credit

that still exists. In exchange, in a deal that is reportedly very

close now to being struck, Republicans want to renew some corporate tax breaks that had recently

expired themselves. Well, yesterday, two of the main lawmakers on tax issues, these are Senate

Finance Chair, Ron Wyden, the Democrat from Oregon,

and House Ways and Means Chair, Jason Smith, Republican from Missouri, announced the two parties,

at least the leaderships, had struck a deal. Now, the new deal is, well, kind of the same as the one they had tried to pass over a

year ago. At least the Democrats did. Democrats would get a limited version of a child tax credit

in exchange for greater incentives for domestic research and development and faster depreciation

of certain kinds of capital investments for business.

I know that sounds wonky, but it affects a lot of people directly and will explain.

But by no means is this a done deal.

What?

...