GOP Payback to White Working Class That Voted for Them: Cut Earned Income Tax and Child Tax Credit

It's almost as if the GOP is trying to sabotage their chances in 2016

I think they know that many of their supporters haven't figured out what has changed that doesn't benefit them. Plus some just vote the ticket no matter what.

Even if this proposal were to pass both houses of Congress, the president would veto, and will most likely have the votes to sustain that veto. Reid hurt himself agreeing to this first proposal, and all parties will be back at the table to find a solution that the president will accept.

originally posted by: 200Plus
a reply to: Skadi_the_Evil_Elf

It's odd isn't it.

You, a working poor vet that sees this as an attack against themselves.

Me, as a broken poor vet seeing it as step in the right direction.

I'm not saying either of us are right or wrong, Sister. I'm just pondering how perception can be so different even from people standing so close

I don't see it as a direct attack on me specifically, per se. I do, however, see it as a petty political tantrum in which those throwing the tantrum pretty much do not care who they hurt, so long as they get their way.

I have no kids, so the child tax credit cuts don't effect me. It does, however, effect a lot of people who are struggling, and that bothers me. I work as a caregiver, and while I do not receive government assistance, all of my clients do, and I have watched everything from their food stamps to their disability/social security checks get cut. These are people that have no other way of increasing or supplementing their income. And what they receive is already a joke in many ways.

The GOP vetoed a veteran's aid bill a few years ago, which does effect me. I rely on the VA for my medical. I also get non-financial help through VA programs that assist with things like mental health, community resources, education, and other things. Programs that are there to help people like me work towards better health, independence, and security. I'm not even mentioning direct disability checks for veterans. Although I don't get any disability money from the VA, I know many vets that do, and rely on it, as well as other VA programs, to survive.

I do not see this as a step in the right direction. The benefits that the working poor receive are pennies in the budget compared to the subsidies, tax breaks, and incentives given to people who already are sleeping on piles of money. Hell, even the middle class benefits from child tax credits, so they are getting screwed too.

In a war, you want your enemy as weak and helpless as possible. As the one percent considers the 99 percent their enemy and a potential threat to their stranglehold on power, their objective is to weaken the lower classes as much as possible. This is why you see austerity pushed everywhere. If people have a social safety net, they are better able to resist oppression. The one percent does not want that in any form. They will continue to wear away all our social infrastructure until people are absolutely desperate, fearful, and controllable. The long term goal is automation an the elimination of almost all jobs. Google just got a contract do do just that, to research automation practices that will eliminate scores of jobs in the coming decades. In the end it will just be a big park for the elites and whatever slaves they deem useful will live in encampments. That is our future if we don't find a way to stop them.

a reply to: TheJourney

You're a little out of touch my friend. $50,000/yr for a couple is NOT middle class.

a reply to: Zona

The emerging tax legislation would make permanent 10 provisions, including an expanded research and development tax credit, which businesses and the Obama administration have wanted to make permanent for years; a measure allowing small businesses to deduct virtually any investment; the deduction for state and local sales taxes; the American Opportunity Tax Credit for college costs; deductions for employer-provided mass transit; and four different breaks for corporate and charitable giving. Smaller measures already passed by the Senate Finance Committee, from tax breaks for car-racing tracks to benefits for racehorse owners, would be extended for one year and retroactively renewed for the current tax year.

I guess the car racing and horse racing fans have louder mouths than the working classes? Really want to know where they're hearts truly lie? Look at all the goodies they left in that are more of a perk for the business and upper classes!
That's all I hear is how our gov't spending is out of control! Ensuring that the kids of our workers are being taken care of seems a tad bit more important then racing cars or horses! I tend to look not only at what they decide to cut (I think we would all agree that something needs to be cut!) but also what they decide to spend money on and I've got to say they have their priorities all screwed up!

But of course we are going have to have an employee provided mass transit system transport all those "legal" imigrants to work as well as the rest of us because by the time they get done printing all this money to pay for all these perks that are bestowed to big business we aren't going to be able to feed our cars to get to work ourselves! Heck they might as well get ahead of the curve and give a tax break for employer provided housing units to be built closer to the job sites so their mass transit can limit it's stops.

a reply to: Zona

I call bs on your math there. I make about $40K a year and bring home ~$1000 a paycheck and I get paid bi-weekly.

a reply to: lostbook
a reply to: Blackmarketeer
a reply to: Greven
a reply to: Willtell

I think you are confused about who is eligible for that tax credit. It is NOT the middle class:

Source

Who Is Eligible, and for How Much?
In the 2013 tax year, working families with children that have annual incomes below about $37,900 to $51,600 (depending on marital status and the number of dependent children) may be eligible for the federal EITC.

Notice the bolded section.

This credit is for WORKING POOR, AKA those who are below the poverty line as outlined here:

Poverty Line USA

The reason for this is many people below that line have a 1-3% effective tax rate, and were actually making money from tax returns by receiving more than they payed in. It actually encouraged low income families to have more children to receive more credits. Not to mention that those below that line are already eligible for a multitude of government financial assistance on both a Federal and State level.

About 15% of people in the USA are below the poverty level respectively.

The republican base has wanted it gone for some time, so this is simply a change their base actually wanted and elected them for.

Abuse of Child Tax Credit

The Republican base basically viewed this credit as welfare for undocumented workers due to the Caviat:

Additional Child Tax Credit - If the amount of your Child Tax Credit is greater than the amount of income tax you owe, you may be able to claim the Additional Child Tax Credit.

So you are also confused on the fact that they are slapping the hand that feeds them. Their base actually wants this change.

a reply to: coldkidc

That is completely inaccurate. See my post above. You actually get back more than you paid in.

a reply to: Skadi_the_Evil_Elf

I guess it's just a matter of which pill you swallowed.

Do you feel the same way (personal attack) about the EO on immigration? Or do you view that as a good thing?

That signature doubled the "working poor" which put more hands in the till. Those pots will be empty faster now as a result.

++I am not attempting to troll or hijack a thread and I am not trying to be rude either. Please understand that. My brain just locks on some things and it locked on this for some reason. Is it simply a matter of reading different propaganda? Different world views? Perhaps the man/woman brain makes us see things differently, though that sounds more sexist than I mean it to be.

I can promise you it is not a "white privilege" thing. I grew up in a slum. I have survived for weeks at a time eating nothing but flour and water or rice with mustard as flavoring. I have family that lived as prostitutes and died as junkies. Friends that died as preteens and teens that died not for something so noble as a nation, but as base as the color of a bandana. I left that life 20 years ago and somehow I look around me and I see the slums are winning the "war". In another generation (or two) I can see more than half the population growing up like me, rather than less 1% like it should be. We are in decline and we just imported 20 million mouths to feed. It's like opening the hatches to "save" a sinking submarine

Sorry about the rant - I'll blame the brain damage

originally posted by: amicktd
a reply to: TheJourney

You're a little out of touch my friend. $50,000/yr for a couple is NOT middle class.

In most areas it is. Middle class is typically 67% to 200% of the median wage.

The problem is the lifestyle of what used to be middle class is now reserved for about the top 5% rather than the middle 70%. Everyones wages went down.

What a GD joke.

How the hell can them 'evil' republicans cut anything ?

Last time I checked they hold 2 of the 3 branches needed to do one GD thing.

And then they don't take control of the sentate until NEXT year.

But then there is the Potus with his 'mighty' pen, and will veto anything they do.

Talk about GD false outrage.

First of all both of these are entitlements. That's the problem with entitlements, once you give them out its dang near impossible to get rid of them.

Also they are refundable credits meaning you can get a tax refund even if you didn't pay any taxes into the system. I prepare tax returns for a living and the earned income tax credit is one of the most abused tax credits out there. It actually rewards people for not working.

People know how much money they have to earn in order to maximize their earned income tax credit and instead of working and making more money, these deadbeats will quit their job just to get the most earned income tax credit. In all honesty the earned income tax credit is wealth redistribution from the middle class to the lower class while providing incentives not to work.

Anyone making more than 30k or so per year as a family does not qualify for the EITC. In my opinion middle class is an average family making 50 to 75k per year.

a reply to: raymundoko

Um. What is wrong with helping the working poor?

If that's what making between $37,900 - $51,600 is these days, with a family of four...

If its the "middle class" or "upper middle class" taking this on, then perhaps taxing the very wealthy for this and leaving the middle out of it might be more workable? But that is anathema, apparently...

I pay taxes out of my paycheck, and my husband pays taxes. I care for two kids, one of which is severely autistic, which is a full-time job in and of itself. My husband works a minimum of 60 hours per week. I work part time, homeschool our youngest and care for a severely disabled child. We are not dead-beats.

Or maybe you think we are??? I don't know. It seems like that is what you are saying... I guess I'm not feeling in any way ashamed of the efforts we put out to eke out a living. I get angry when people get lumped together as "abusers" of a tax law that actually lessens the tax burden for working families at the lower end of the economic spectrum. You want to talk "abuse" of tax laws, let's look at the upper echelons and how much they don't pay...

- AB

a reply to: AboveBoard

What are you even talking about? If you took offense to what I was saying that may be an issue with you, not me.

I was stating why the Republican base could care less.

However, upon further researching this I found out why it was left off, and the OP should have known this:

The laws that are listed are laws expiring this year or in 2015.

The Child tax credit does not expire until 2017, so this is much ado about nothing and appears to be nothing more than a left wing hit job.

Source

The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 extended this provision for five years through December 2017.

So there you have it. The OP (or at lease the article in the OP) is either extremely disingenuous or extremely uninformed. Either way it seems to be nothing more than partisan hackery.

a reply to: raymundoko

My apologies if I misdirected my thoughts/feelings.

Peace

AB

a reply to: TheJourney

poor relative to other americans, we're still richer than most of the world but have issues of the relative expense of living in the US.

originally posted by: Wildmanimal
a reply to: lostbook

Neither "side is doing the "Right Thing".
Sad to say, I am becoming disillusioned
with D.C. politics.

Lol !! So your not disillusioned yet ??

Lol

This is why the EITC became law, in other words, corporate welfare. To remove responsibility from businesses and corporations for paying decent wages and give it to Wall Street instead :
The earned income tax credit (EITC), first proposed in the early 1970s, was signed by President Ford. It was later substantially expanded by President Reagan, who deemed it “the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress” (Snyder 1995). However, in recent years, the EITC has often come under political attack. It is criticized (sometimes implicitly but often explicitly) because it eliminates the income tax liability of many low-income workers, thus, it is claimed, giving them no “skin in the game” in support of the common good.1 Others criticize it for redistributing income to “people who have never paid a dime in their lives” but nevertheless “get a check from the government” (Sandmeyer 2013).
LINK www.epi.org...

I know that for the next two years, the working man, woman, child better suck it up and get ready. And pray you have family to help if you get sick or laid off or fired. And expect rent to rise dramatically.

a reply to: MOMof3

See my post above. It looks like this law was left off because it isn't expiring yet. All the other laws listed are expiring now. After researching I can't really find any plans to scrap this law, but I do see that they want to reduce how much it pays so they can expand it further up the middle class.

Ultimately I think the the article in the OP was poorly researched partisan hackery.

originally posted by: lostbook
WOW........I can't believe what I just read......Republicans are getting back at Obama for his solo maneuver on immigration by sticking it to the working class; namely the working class Whites who voted for them in the last election. Repubs. say that the move is an effort to stop illegals who will get amnesty from Obama from taking advantage of the Earned Income Tax and Child Tax Credit but, come on...........really?

The emerging tax legislation would make permanent 10 provisions, including an expanded research and development tax credit, which businesses and the Obama administration have wanted to make permanent for years; a measure allowing small businesses to deduct virtually any investment; the deduction for state and local sales taxes; the American Opportunity Tax Credit for college costs; deductions for employer-provided mass transit; and four different breaks for corporate and charitable giving.
Smaller measures already passed by the Senate Finance Committee, from tax breaks for car-racing tracks to benefits for racehorse owners, would be extended for one year and retroactively renewed for the current tax year.
[snip] Left off were the two tax breaks valued most by liberal Democrats: a permanently expanded earned-income credit and a child tax credit for the working poor. Friday night, Republican negotiators announced they would exclude those measures as payback for the president's executive order on immigration, saying a surge of newly legalized workers would claim the credit, tax aides from both parties said.

I see what Republicans are trying to do but I think it's still a stupid move and the wrong move. Sure some will take advantage of it for the wrong reasons but there is always corruption in everything that humans do. I believe that there are just certain types of people whom are innately corrupt. That being said the Republicans will only serve to stir up their base; a base which is losing popularity in my opinion. What says ATS?

www.huffingtonpost.com...

Why is it so hard to believe?

I just don't get why people don't understand that the GOP platform is NOT working for the small guy nor the working and middle class. All of their policies are most definitely in favor of the wealthy, powerful, and corporations.

People have to get their head around that. That way they will not feel any surprise.

The GOP... does not work for you, unless you are rich and powerful.