We've never had a problem with finding money in the federal budget. Iraq War/Afghanistan/Drones? Pfft...a few trillion, no problem. Tax cuts for the rich? Here, take hundreds of billions of dollars. The problem is PRIORITIES and MORALITY.
Today, the question boils down to: does the Congress want to help 25 million kids and their families have a few dollars more in the household budget--to buy food, clothes and pay for heating--OR would the Congress rather give billions of dollars in useless, wasteful tax cuts to business?
When the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed in 2009 (at $840 billion, the "stimulus" bill was too puny, in my humble opinion to deal with the crisis at hand...but I digress), one of the things that it did was to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC).
As Citizens for Tax Justice points out:
The ARRA expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit:
Boosted benefits for families with more than two children. Previously families with more than two children received the credit at the same rate as families with two children-- 40 percent--but under the expansion these families receive a credit rate of 45 percent. For example, under the expansion the maximum credit for a married couple with three or more children is $6,242. Without the improvement, the maximum credit would be $5,548, the same amount a married couple with two children receives.
Reduced marriage penalties. The expansion increased the income amount at which the EITC phases out for married couples, thus allowing married couples to receive a small benefit boost at higher income levels.
The ARRA expansion of the Child Tax Credit:
Lowered the refundability threshold. The ARRA expansion lowered the income threshold above which a taxpayer can receive a tax credit at a rate of 15 percent of earnings to $3,000, compared to around the threshold of $13,850 it would otherwise have been in 2015. This means taxpayers that even more lower-income families can receive this credit.
Those changes will expire at the end of 2017--and, if they do, will deprive 13 million families--
with 25 million kids--of some badly needed money.
Here's the table that shows what the effect is:
CTJ pegs the cost of making these benefits permanent at $14 billion in 2018, a trivial number, a rounding error in the scheme of things.
But, the PRIORITIES and MORALITY of the people running the show on Capitol Hill prefer to piss away billions of dollars on tax cuts for business that don't do jack for the economy and, certainly not for 25 million kids.
A year ago, I wrote about Congress' vote--including Democrats--to flush billions of dollars down the drain through the continuation of "Tax extenders". Quoting from that post, courtesy of CTJ:
Most of the tax breaks fail to achieve any desirable policy goals. For example, they include bonus depreciation breaks for investments in equipment that the Congressional Research Service have found to be a “relatively ineffective tool for stimulating the economy, a tax credit for research defined so loosely that it includes the work soft drink companies put into developing new flavors,and a tax break that allows General Electric to do financial business offshore without paying U.S. taxes on the profits.
■ The tax breaks cannot possibly be effective in encouraging businesses to do anything because they are almost entirely retroactive. The tax breaks actually expired at the end of 2013 and this bill will extend them (almost entirely retroactively) through 2014. These tax provisions are supposedly justified as incentives for companies to do things Congress thinks are desirable, like investing in equipment or research, but that justification makes no sense when tax breaks are provided to businesses for things they have done in the past.
■ The bill increases the deficit by $42 billion to provide tax breaks that mostly benefit businesses, even after members of Congress have refused to enact any measure that helps working people unless the costs are offset. The measures that Congress refused to enact without offsets include everything from creating jobs by funding highway projects to extending emergency unemployment benefits.[emphasis added]
And the price tax for continuing "tax extenders" is going to get steeper in 2018:
to the tune of $73 billion.
So, this is a pretty clear choice: spend a paltry $14 billion to help 25 million kids OR hand over $73 billion to corporations that don't help anyone but the CEOs looking to fatten up bottom lines and boost share prices so they can make more dough.