On July 1, 2025, Florida Senator Ashley Moody cast one of the 50 votes that passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, whose child tax credit leaves out children whose families earn too little: 1,201,000 Florida children, 29 percent, are ineligible for the full credit. The same day she voted against a motion to expand the credit to the level of the 2021 expanded credit.
On July 30, 2026, Moody voted against taking up a resolution to overturn the Health and Human Services rule that ended the federal cap holding child care co-payments to 7 percent of family income. She voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary, whose department closed half of its regional Head Start offices, and Alex Adams, whose agency wrote the co-payment rule.
Ashley Moody's Votes and Confirmations on Child Care, the Child Tax Credit and Head Start
- Moody Cast One of the 50 Votes for a Child Tax Credit That Leaves Out Low-Income Children. On July 1, 2025, Ashley Moody voted yes on H.R. 1, which passed 50 to 50 with the Vice President's vote, so it would have failed without her. The law raised the maximum credit but kept the rules that give low-earning families less. Under the law, more than 1 in 4 children (28%) under age 17 will be ineligible for the full Child Tax Credit because their families earn too little, the Center on Poverty and Social Policy found. Its new Social Security number rule strips the Child Tax Credit from the approximately 2.6 million citizen children whose parents lack one, according to the National Immigration Law Center. The child care tax credit remains nonrefundable, and Only about 8.5 percent of families with children will receive a larger credit in 2026, the Tax Policy Center found.
- Moody Voted Against Expanding the Child Tax Credit in July 2025. On July 1, 2025, Moody voted no on a motion to send the tax-and-spending bill back to committee with instructions to make changes that would increase the amount and availability of the Child Tax Credit to match the expanded 2021 credit, adjusted for inflation. It failed 47 to 53. Under the law as enacted, a two-parent family with two children needs a minimum of $41,500 in income to get the full credit, so children of parents in lower-paid jobs get a partial credit or none.
- Moody Voted Against Restoring the 7 Percent Cap on Child Care Co-Payments in July 2026. On July 30, 2026, Moody voted against the motion to proceed to a resolution disapproving the Health and Human Services rule on the Child Care and Development Fund, and the resolution died when the motion failed 47 to 52. She had voted in October 2025 to confirm the Assistant Secretary for Family Support, Alex Adams, whose Administration for Children and Families issued the rule. The rule, final in May 2026, rescinds the requirements to limit family co-payments to 7 percent of family income and to pay child care providers based on enrollment. The program provided subsidies to more than 1.6 million children each month, and it reaches only 13 percent of eligible families, the Center for American Progress found.
- Moody Voted Against Protecting Food Aid for Families With Children in June 2025. On June 30, 2025, Moody voted against a motion to keep the tax-and-spending bill from cutting any food assistance benefits for families with children under the age of 12, and against a second motion to protect parents and others from the bill's food aid cuts. The first motion failed 47 to 53, and the second failed 49 to 51. The law extended SNAP work rules to parents of children 14 and older, and the Congressional Budget Office estimated a net reduction in SNAP participation of 300,000 people in those groups. In Florida, CBPP estimated that 113,000 adults aged 55 to 64 and 51,000 parents of children 14 and older were at risk of losing SNAP under the expanded work rules.
- Moody Voted to Confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Whose Department Closed Half of Its Regional Head Start Offices. On February 13, 2025, Ashley Moody voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of health and human services, and he was confirmed 52 to 48. In April 2025 Kennedy's department closed five of its 10 regional Head Start offices, which oversaw nearly 318,000, or 44 percent of, funded slots, according to the Center for American Progress. About roughly 500 from the Administration for Children and Families lost their jobs, The Imprint reported, and federal child care money for the third quarter was awarded to states on May 22, 2025, weeks late.
What Ashley Moody's Votes Mean for Children and Parents in Florida
- Child Tax Credit. 1,201,000 Florida children, 29 percent of the state's children, are ineligible for the full Child Tax Credit under the 2025 law because their families' earnings are too low, according to Columbia University's Center on Poverty and Social Policy, so their parents get a partial credit or none.
- Food aid for parents. Under the law's expanded SNAP work rules, CBPP estimated that 51,000 parents of children 14 and older in Florida were at risk of losing food aid, and Florida's SNAP rolls fell from 2,849,239 people in July 2025 to 2,219,639 in July 2026, USDA data show.
Frequently Asked Questions About Ashley Moody on Child care and families
What is Ashley Moody's record on child care and families under Trump?
Ashley Moody cast one of the 50 votes for the 2025 law whose child tax credit leaves out children in lower-income families, and she voted in July 2025 against expanding the Child Tax Credit and against protecting food aid for families with children. In July 2026 she voted against overturning the rule that ended the federal child care co-payment cap. She voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose department closed half of its regional Head Start offices, and Alex Adams, whose agency wrote the co-payment rule.
Did Ashley Moody vote to cap child care costs for low-income families?
No. Ashley Moody voted on July 30, 2026 against taking up a resolution to overturn the rule that rescinded the 7 percent cap on child care co-payments, and the resolution died 47 to 52. The rule rescinds the requirements to limit family co-payments to 7 percent of family income, so Florida, like every state, no longer has to keep co-payments at or below that cap.
How many Florida children are left out of the full Child Tax Credit?
Under the 2025 law Ashley Moody voted for, 1,201,000 Florida children, 29 percent, do not get the full Child Tax Credit because their families earn too little, according to Columbia University's Center on Poverty and Social Policy. Moody also voted against the motion to restore the 2021 expanded credit, which failed 47 to 53.
Last updated: 2026-10-25