----- Original Message ----- From: "Max Sawicky" <sawicky at epinet.org>
Correction on H.R.6, the bill makes the Child Credit refundable for families with one or two children up to the extent of payroll plus income taxes, *net of EITC benefits." So if you paid $1,000 in taxes and got $600 in EITC, you can't get a bigger refund than $400. For fun anyone can check the instructions, worksheets, tables, and forms for the EITC, Child Credit, &'Additional Child Credit'-- it's about 150 pp. This mess will now be extended to more families, so instead of leaving 24 million children behind, the tax bill only leaves about 20 million behind. I would not call it significant in terms of scope (i.e., amount of money, number of beneficiaries). It is politically important because it highlights the soft underbelly of the GOP package. For our proposal, we reduced all of it to a one page form -- 9 line worksheet and simple table. The GOP deal with the credit is hitched to a marriage penalty fix that is inferior to Bush's. The GOP increases a couple's standard deduction and 15% bracket; Bush provided a new two-earner deduction which makes more sense to me and doesn't cost too much either. So I wouldn't support this thing; unfortunately it passed by a high margin because it headlined "marriage penalty relief" and "child credit increase," both tough things to vote against. The best thing in the mix was an incremental expansion of the EITC for couples.
Lieberman has picked up the dividend idea, but with a significant difference. If you don't pay income or payroll taxes, you get squat. The Pwogwessive Caucus had a stwaight per-capita gwant. The Dems have basically picked up the Lieberman version. The Pwogwessives are happy because Charlie Rangel gave them a tootsie roll.
See ya.
max