Can the expanded child tax credit come back from the dead?

Advocates for an expanded child tax credit (CTC) did not expect to be in this situation.

A year ago, when Congress passed an expanded version of the policy that’s been around with bipartisan backing since 1997, some 35 million parents across the US began to see hundreds of dollars land in their bank accounts every month — money that they could spend however they saw fit.

Economists and policy experts hailed the program, which, passed as part of Biden’s pandemic relief package, gave families the resources to buy household essentials like food, gas,...