Tia Simmons
I’m a devoted wife, daughter, and mother of three from Hurricane, W.V. I will be graduating from Purdue Law in December 2026, with degrees in Political Science and Applied Economics. In addition to my work with the PAB, I am an alumna of the RESULTS Organizing and Advocacy Fellowship. I specialize in entitlement policy and its impact on children and have lived experience of how bad policy choices impact real people.
1. What is something you’re really proud of as a parent?
The thing I focus on with my kids is them being happy, and I’m proud of myself that I’ve been able to provide that for them. They’re just happy and thriving kids that don’t have to worry about the bills—I worry about that—and they get to just be kids.
2. What do you want lawmakers to know about what it’s like raising children and making ends meet in today’s economy?
It’s nowhere near as easy as they might think. Even when you make a decent amount of income, it’s still incredibly challenging to make ends meet when you have young children. We’re not spending it on beer and cigarettes, like some of our lawmakers might think. But it’s just really challenging. Families need support. I fear that without more support, families won’t be able to make it before long.
3. Why is the Child Tax Credit (CTC) important to you?
In 2021, we didn’t get the CTC because at the time I owed back child support for a child I gave up for adoption when I was 15. That was really tough because our family was hit hard by COVID. My husband was laid off and I was in grad school, so I wasn’t working. We had no income coming in for a while, and we had just bought a house before everything hit. We couldn’t make mortgage payments, went into foreclosure, and had to file for bankruptcy and go into a 5-year payment plan for that. It was really hard, especially because it felt like my kids were being punished for something that I did a long time ago—that was really the right thing to do.
A lot of families I know struggled with not getting the CTC for some reason or another. We couldn’t claim it for my niece who we were raising, because my sister had claimed her on a tax return. So even though we should have been eligible for her at least, we couldn’t get it. So it was just really tough that they don’t have a better system in place to make sure that families who really need the CTC are getting it. Because it seemed like the families that did get the CTC really really benefitted from it.
Actually, 2025 was the first year we ever received it and it made a huge difference, especially because I’ve been really sick and haven’t been able to work. It helped us catch up on some bills and make sure everything was paid. And we actually had some money left over, so this is like the fifth month in a row we’ve had our mortgage paid on time, which felt huge. The CTC took away a lot of stress from all the different things that life throws at us.
4. Why is it important to you that lawmakers expand the Child Tax Credit?
I know a lot of families that I care tremendously about really struggle to make it through and can’t make ends meet. We’re in WV, where the poverty level is really high, and there’s not a lot of employment opportunities. It’s a bad situation and prices keep going up. I worry about what will happen to my children and other families’ children if we don’t get that support. Their opportunities will be really, really reduced.
CTC would allow families to afford basic needs so that kids could do things like extracurricular activities or be healthy and focus on school so they can get scholarships and things like that. Not eating right, not having good nutrition, not sleeping well, all those things make it hard for kids to go to school and concentrate. That leads to reduced opportunities to get out of here someday and maybe not have to repeat the cycle.
5. If you had $500 more for each of your children every month, how would you use it?
Oh my gosh, if I had $500 for each kid every month, I would help my niece get therapy for dyslexia, which we cannot afford unfortunately. I’d also make sure that they all have clothes and shoes that fit them, instead of having to pass them down to each other all the time, and hem them and sew them to make it all work. And groceries. I would probably buy more groceries, and we wouldn’t have to be quite so picky about the cost of what we eat.
6. In addition to increasing the benefit level, are there other changes to the CTC that you think are important to ensure children and families can thrive?
They need to make sure there is a system in place that all families who need it can get it. It shouldn’t be based on a parent’s past decision or past debt, or anything like that. It should be based on helping the child. So policymakers need to do whatever takes to get that money to go toward caring for the child. I don’t know what that system looks like, but something better than what we went through in 2021.
Monthly payments would also be the ideal. That would be the easiest and fastest way to help families feel the benefit from the CTC. You do get the benefit when it’s a lump sum, but it would be felt much more by families if it was a monthly payment. And I think it should be easier to get in the first place. Of course you have to file your taxes anyway, but all the paperwork makes it really hard to get the CTC.