Senators Strike Child Tax Benefits Deal

AP | 6/05/03 | MARY DALRYMPLE

[kattracks]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Unable to shake Democratic demands that minimum wage workers get the same benefit from a $1,000 child tax credit as other families, Republicans in the Senate struck an agreement to expand the benefit for low-income families and extend the benefit to more high-income couples.

"There is a deal," said a spokesman for Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., who has been advocating the change since President Bush signed a $350 billion tax cut last month.

The strategy, designed to diffuse a growing storm over a bigger child tax credit for middle-income but not low-income families, gives both Republicans and Democrats a reason to back the bill.

Minimum wage workers would get the same rebate check, worth $400 per child, going to other families later this summer — giving Democrats a rare victory in a Republican-ruled government.

Married couples making up to $140,000 could claim the full credit for two years at the end of the bill's 10-year horizon. That change would limit the so-called "marriage penalty" in the credit and give Republicans a win.

Republicans resisted changing the law, which currently offers the credit to families who pay income tax and gives minimum wage workers — those who get enough tax benefits to see their income taxes eliminated — a partial refund.

Some Republicans have historically supported refundable tax credits, such as the much larger earned income tax credit, as a way to encourage low-wage workers to stay in the labor force and avoid welfare.

Backed by a strong push from community activists, Democrats pointed to the tax cut enacted last month as concrete proof that Republicans favor the wealthy over the poor.

"This administration is waging war on poor children," said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. "The reality is that they are steadily and surely trying to turn the clock back on all of the programs and supports that working families and their children need and deserve."

The legislation also reduces the five definitions of a "child" used for different tax deductions and credits to a single definition. The bill's $10 billion cost will be offset by an extension of customs fees.

[GraniteStateConservative]

Investment provides long-term stimulus, not short-term stimulus. Consumption takes goods off the shelves now-- which forces factories to replace those goods now, which forces factories to hire more workers (or pay more in overtime). Investment could be a payoff of several years down the road-- when Kerry could get the political benefit.

[lodwick]

They get to keep their power and their paychecks, and the taxpayers didn't even get the Vaseline.

[clintonh8r]

Does buying beer and lottery tickets count?

[Dianna]

I don't get the reason why one cannot claim a 17 year old. My kids are 5 & 3 so it doesn't effect me, but I feel it is unfair.

For some reason they've made the cut off age 16. I think that is the same age that SS payments widows get for children is also cut off. Maybe the rationale is that it should be the same.

[RinaseaofDs]

Only good point. The precedent is awful, however. I have visions of Caesar mounting his chariot with bags of gold, riding among the poor to curry favor.

[tnlibertarian]

What happens to that money in savings? It is invested. If it is invested in companies, they have money to buy capital. In addition, a wealth factor exists which states that when a person believes themselves to be better off financially, they will have a higher propensity to spend. By having more money in the savings account or less debt, the person will spend a higher portion of every check they receive. That means that a person who saves that $400 may end up consuming more than that amount. Also, many "rich" are small business owners who will invest that money into their businesses directly by purchasing equipment, or with their cut in the marginal rates, hire another employee.
You're right, the poor will spend all of that rebate, but so will everyone else that doesn't bury it in the backyard.

[RinaseaofDs]

Another good point. This makes the tax cut unrepealable. (is that a word?)

I still don't understand WHY they had to deal to get this. RINO's going wobbly?

[Consort]

I've made up my mind, I want more of MY tax money returned to ME not the People who don't contribute.

Get with the program. I'm talking about people who pay sales taxes and payroll taxes wanting some of THEIR tax money returned to THEM — just like YOU want tax money returned to YOU. Do you think you're better than them?

If you can't make up you mind...

At least I have one.

P.S. I don't want to "consort" with you anymore.

If I wanted to sink to your level, I could have some real fun with your screen name.

[eboyer]

I'm a new parent of a 18 month old so schooling is a bit off for her.

I look at it kind of like Social Security. I am sure a better solution exists but I feel like enough of my money has been directed at this cause without getting a benefit that I want to see a return on my investment now that I can.

[GraniteStateConservative]

Most poor people will spend a $400 check all at once on $400 worth of stuff, and not on some lottery tickets and some beer. If you gave them a $20 check, they'd spend it on beer and lottery tickets, maybe. The likeliest outcome is they'll spend it on home appliances or electronics-- TV sets, stereos, dishwashers, air conditioners, washing machines, DVD players with DVDs, etc.

[ancient_geezer]

An intersting thing to note about your table is that those receiving the tax credit do in fact pay taxes. They may not be paying income taxes, but they are paying federal taxes. This counters, in part, the argument that we shouldn't give the benefits of the credit to those that pay no income tax.

True, it also points out we, as individuals, are burdened with more federal taxes than most are actually aware of.

Any tax remitted by a business must come from is sales revenues, if the business expects to survive for very long. Guess who ultimately pays.

We get it from the front end on individual income taxes & FICA, then get hit again through taxes embedded in the prices of goods and services.

No one really knows the actual amount of taxes he is burdened with by government. We can guess approximate averages from tables like that in my reply #13, but there is no means to ever determine the actual amount. That has the same insidious effect on the electorate as the worst of the European VATs.

Our tax system leaves government unaccountable to large segements of the population by encouraging a large proportion of the electorate to believe in the toothfairy and as you point out some seeing a substantial handout in tax credits. That problem is being exacerbated by both parties in a bidding war to remove evermore persons from individual income tax reporting. Is it any wonder that 70% of the voting public clamors for more from government looking for the top 40% of income earners/producers to foot the bill.

 

The Honorable James DeMint (R-SC)
United States House of Representatives
THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2001
12:00 noon

• "There has been a shift in the relationship between individuals and government, he argues, such that fewer and fewer are paying taxes at the same time that more and more are receiving increasingly generous benefits. If it becomes the case that most voters do not bear a financial burden for this largess, then there will be little to restrain--and significant political incentives to encourage--the continued growth of government.

Perceptions are everything in politics.

[Jesse]

Compassionate conservativism is not neoconservatism, or paleoconservatism.

I call it doublespeak/doublethink* conservatism. The GOP voting for this liberal socialist income redistribution by the state, yet when asked it will assert this is a conservative position to take.

And just like the rest of the old GOP platform which is fading away fast, we have the GOP simultaneously saying it is against gun control, but Bush favors the assault weapon ban. The GOP is against bigger government but under its leadership the last two years spending is up at least 22%. GOP is against welfare, yet last year voted in the biggest farm pork spending bill in a generation. The list goes on, growing larger by the day.

*From Orwell's 1984. Doublethink is the act of simultaneously holding two mutually contradictory viewpoints and believing both.

[DeathfromBelow]

If you had an f''ing brain you would figure out the screen name and back the f off. Continued posting to me I will consider abuse.

The THread is about FEDeral Income Tax Money, not fees, sales, etc. Get a life

[Jesse]

"...we're going to spend it on a long-overdue vacation.
Are we blipping your radar, yet?"

Yep. Now a bunch of people who didn't pay the tax in the first place get to take a vacation or buy a new tv, courtesy of people like me without children who subsidize your child tax credit. Why would that tick me off?

At least you could say, thank you. Or do just want me to send along another couple of hundred bucks so you can buy your kids new vacation clothes too? We could just cut out the IRS as middleman and I could send along a money order, would that be ok?

Spineless GOP.

[clintonh8r]

Wow...I never knew there were so many income redistribution enthusiasts here on FR. I guess when the goodies are coming their way pocketbook trumps principle every time....

[jackbill]

What the chances this welfare giveaway will pass the House?

Two chances - slim and none.

There ain't no way that Tom DeLay is going to let such a bill even get to the floor. If he agrees to make the Child Credit refundable it is going to be at a lot higher cost than the Republican wimps in the Senate agreed to.

Heard this morning that, for one thing, he would demand that they make the Death Tax repeal permanent.

[The South Texan]

This whole tax rebate thing is a crock of crap. People that pay zero, zip, nada in income taxes are going to be GIVEN $400 per child on top of the thousands of dollars they ge back in earned income tax credits. I hear people brag about that all of time.

Meanwhile , my family will get zero, zip , nada in refunds because we make too much money. $800 would pay for our meals lodging for an extended weekend we have planed in a few weeks. In fact we had to write a check to the IRS on April 15 to pay additional taxes.

I am taxed off. I am tired of having increaseing "fees" tacked on to may utility, cable, and phone bills. Property taxes and evalutaions are going through the roof and when we the so called "rich" want a little bit of money back we are called greaty by the Rats and their buds in the commie/socialist media.

[GraniteStateConservative]

We're talking short-term stimulus. Investment is long-term. We sent out $600 checks Summer 2001 and just over 20% spent the checks, but the checks only went to people who paid enough taxes (otherwise they got less than that or nothing at all). People who get welfare checks don't save or invest those checks. They spend all of them. There wasn't a jolt in spending because the checks weren't sent to people who would head out to Wal-Mart and boost their sales. The money in 2001 went to people who would stimulate the economy longterm.

[Consort]

tIf you had an f''ing brain you would figure out the screen name and back the f off.

You are the one who butted in back in Post # 72, telling me that I "was wrong". And you brought up my screen name in Post #128. You can dish it out but you can't take it.

Continued posting to me I will consider abuse.

If the truth abuses you, then that's your problem.

The THread is about FEDeral Income Tax Money, not fees, sales, etc.

That's a Democrat answer. Taxes are taxes.

Get a life

Now you can go about your business.

[DeathfromBelow]

You were WRONG then and NOW. I'm against taxes too, but it is a Democratic Underground troll that plays the poor poor "non-taxpayer" should be Entitled to more of someone elses money.

Don't Like taxes start at the local level, do something productive, or as I said earlier, donate to the government so those poor non-payers can get some mo money.

If you weren't so sensitive about the plight of others, you might have read the article and determined it wasn't just "about taxes, fees, etc.".

Go peddly your social welfare schemes somewhere else.

Now I will go back to business, so that I can earn those excess dollars that you want your share of so badly.