Thursday, December 20, 2012

Boehner's Plan B Is Hurtful


* Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner's "Plan B" would raise taxes on the hardworking lower income people and their families.

WashingtonPost:

....While the bill makes permanent the expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) signed into law by George W. Bush as part of the 2001 tax cut deal — which bumped the credit from $500 to $1,000 — it does not extend an expansion that was passed as part of the 2009 stimulus package, and has been renewed since then, allowing poor families to refund more of the credit. Nor does it extend the stimulus’s expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), by far the most important anti-poverty program the federal government has, or the American Opportunity Credit (AOC), which provides tuition assistance for middle-class families.

That has a huge impact on lower-income families. The Tax Policy Center hasn’t projected the distributional effect of extending the AOC, but it has estimated those effects for the stimulus expansions of EITC and CTC:


That is the way the Republicans work. The Republicans want to coddle the rich and hurt those struggling to put food on the table. John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and the rest of the Tea Party Republicans should be ashamed of themselves for saying the President isn't doing anything.  While Boehner and Cantor cry crocodile tears for the rich, working mothers would see their taxes go up, leaving them less money to feed and clothe the kids.  Nice job, Boehner and Cantor. You two are boneheads.