Ivanka Trump Meets With Conservatives To Discuss Expanding Child Tax Credit

Ivanka Trump made a new push Wednesday morning to convince conservative activists to get behind her plan of expanding the child tax credit.

The first daughter and special advisor to the president held an off-the-record meeting with conservatives at the Americans for Tax Reform headquarters in Washington D.C., Politico reports. There, Trump told conservative leaders she would like for the child tax credit to increase from its current level of $1,000 annually to at least $2,000. The additional money would be routed to folks by cutting down payroll taxes, according to the first daughter. However, she didn't elaborate on the overall cost of the proposal, or whether it would benefit all taxpayers or only those below a defined income threshold.

For the last couple of months, Trump has been working with the office of Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio to develop the details of the policy. She met with Rubio and several other Republican lawmakers back in June to discuss how to make childcare more affordable. (The Florida Republican has proposed raising the child tax credit to $2,500 and giving incentives to companies offering paid family leave.)

After the Wednesday meeting, Trump tweeted, "Just concluded a great meeting on #TaxReform & the Child Tax Credit w/ coalitions supporting tax relief for American working families. I look forward to making this expanded Child Tax Credit a reality!Working parents deserve #TaxReform."

She also made her pitch to lawmakers from both sides of the aisle after dropping into the Oval Office unannounced at the end of a bipartisan meeting during which her father struck a debt-ceiling deal with Democrats.

"We asked Ivanka to briefly join the meeting for an update on the child care tax credit and how we are working to make tax reform a bipartisan issue," Marc Short, White House director of legislative affairs, told CNN. "It was a quick and productive conversation."

An aide briefed on the meeting said the Republicans in the room were "annoyed" by the first daughter's presence, but a spokesperson for House Speaker Paul Ryan told CNN the characterization wasn't true.

As senior adviser to her father, Trump has made it part of her portfolio to help working class families, particularly women. (Whether those efforts have been successful eight months into the Trump administration is another story.) If she's able to convince Republicans to double the child tax credit as a way to help middle class families, it would greatly benefit the president's base.

But it might not be so simple: Even though the White House has yet to roll out a detailed tax reform proposal, the Trump administration wants to lower both corporate and individual tax rates. To do so, the administration would need to find a way to offset the lost revenue, and expanding the child tax credit would only add to that burden.

Conservatives might not be so eager to support Trump's policy, either, because expanding any type of tax credit is not something the Republican Party usually champions.