Cory Booker: “Thank you for the question, my long, longtime friend, one of the folks I have known the longest whom I get to serve…”

“Thank you for the question, my long, longtime friend, one of the folks I have known the longest whom I get to serve with. What you did for me when I came here--It was you and Sherrod Brown who sat right there by the door. You let Bennet and Brown become Bennet, Brown, Booker--three B's. We joined together with some of the most extraordinary House Members and Brother Warnock to fight for the child tax credit. It took years, but we found our opening when we called Ron Klain together before the election was even settled and said: Please, the best thing our country can do is to expand the child tax credit and make it fully refundable. Because we knew, as you said, it would give the overwhelming majority--between 80 and 93 percent depending on what State you are--of people in those States a--when you expand the earned income tax credit, it would give them a tax break. It was arguably one of the greatest tax cuts in the last 50 years. It cut child poverty in America nearly in half. And child poverty is a moral obscenity. Child poverty is violence against children--violence. Here is the thing that you and I both know from the research: Every dollar you spend in raising a child above the poverty line, you return to society between $5 and $7 in economic growth and activity or in lesser costs because kids above the child poverty line have, for example, less visits to the emergency room.…”