In the News

The expanded Child Tax Credit will help Kansas families recover from the pandemic, according to U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, D-3rd Dist.

New monthly payments will begin reaching families' bank accounts Thursday, and Rep. Davids and other officials shared resources for families to check their eligibility, track payments and update their information with the IRS.

Rep. Davids voted to support the American Rescue Plan, which expanded and improved Child Tax Credits. The plan provides monthly advance payments of up to $300 per child.

Sharice Davids strolled through downtown Overland Park Friday afternoon — with an ice cream cone in hand — stopping to meet with local small business owners to hear their pandemic survival stories and how federal relief programs played a role.

"Today has been really fun; to see just how innovative … the problem-solving modes that entrepreneurs around here have been putting into work," said U.S. Rep. Davids, D-Kansas, after the tour Friday. "I think people don't realize just what a vibrant community we have here in the Kansas Third [district] or in the Kansas City metro."

Without federal aid from the American Rescue Plan, some Overland Park business owners said they wouldn't have made it through the past year.

"We shut down completely for about a month at the beginning of the pandemic, and that federal aid helped us deal with outstanding bills and be able to bring staff back," Elaine Van Buskirk and Jan Knobel, co-owners of The Upper Crust, said in a news release. "Now, we're back to baking and serving the community we love full-time."

Federal money from a $715 billion infrastructure bill approved by the U.S. House Thursday could make the project to expand U.S. Highway 69 in Overland Park richer, if the measure survives an eventual Senate conference.

The prospective $15 million injection —plus a state match — is targeted specifically at the 167th Street interchange.

The House vote came a week after the Overland Park City County voted to approve adding express toll lanes on U.S. 69 as the preferred way to deal with growing congestion on what has become Kansas's busiest highway.

A new interchange in Johnson County and electric buses for Kansas City are in the new infrastructure bill being considered by the House Wednesday.

Area lawmakers are in important positions to decide the fate of the bill. This is money for roads, bridges and promoting climate change. U.S. Rep. Sam Graves is the top Republican on the House Infrastructure Committee and U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, a Kansas Democrat, is the vice chair.

"I think what we're seeing, in my view, is some real momentum getting built up," Davids said.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly on Wednesday launched public-service announcements about COVID-19, reflecting officials' fears that people who travel over the Fourth of July holiday will return with the fast-spreading delta variant.

Rep. Davids joined Alex Witt on Sunday, June 27 to speak on the new bipartisan infrastructure framework, the American Families Plan, the Child Tax Credit, the January 6th House Select Committee, and Pride at the White House.

When Democrat Sharice Davids was elected in 2018 as a U.S. representative for Kansas' third congressional district, she became the first openly gay congressperson to represent her state.

"I will say one of the first times that I realized that I wanted to be at least more informed, if not more engaged, was when Missouri passed the constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman," Davids said, "and I just remember being so both heartbroken and also upset, but I didn't realize that so many people were going to vote in favor of that constitutional amendment."