Biden's Child Tax Credit seems like it should be a political slam dunk, but it's getting scaled back anyway

As government policy changes go, it's hard to find one that helps millions of Americans as rapidly and directly as President Joe Biden's expanded Child Tax Credit.

Since its temporary enactment in Biden's $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill in March, it has given the parents of 60 million children up to $300 per child each month, according to the administration. For 90% of them, the money goes directly into their bank accounts from the Treasury.

"A tax cut for middle-class people," Biden told a CNN town hall on Thursday. And because it's fully available to households with little or no income, the President boasted in Pennsylvania a day earlier, the expanded credit has cut child poverty in the US by 50%.