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Tag: child tax credit
Republicans and child tax credit

WATCH: GOP Senator Schooled By Fox News Host On Child Tax Credit

When Republican senators appear on Fox News or Fox Business and rail against the Build Back Better Act — including the child tax credit — they can usually expect the host to agree with their talking points. Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, however, got a surprise during a December 26 appearance on Fox News Sunday(formerly hosted by Chris Wallace) when guest host Mike Emanuel demonstrated that the child tax credit reduces poverty.

Blunt told Emanuel, “We doubled the child tax credit just a handful of years ago, and we need to look at that if that is no longer meeting the need of moving kids out of poverty. But families that make $150,000, for instance, aren’t in poverty in Missouri. I don’t think they’re in poverty almost anywhere in the United States.”

But Emanuel had plenty of data in support of the child tax credit, telling Blunt, “According to the Urban Institute, continuing the benefit could have a significant impact on child poverty, reducing child poverty to about 8.4 percent from 14.2 percent, a fall of roughly 40 percent. Is that a compelling argument to extend it?”

Emanuel also told the Missouri Republican, “Another argument for the child tax credit is it would bolster financial security and spur economic growth in Missouri by reducing taxes on the middle class and those striving to break into it. How do you respond?”

Blunt, however, never really answered Emanuel’s question, slamming the Build Back Better Act as “Build Back Broker” and describing Democrats’ support of the child tax credit as a “gimmick.”

Although the Build Back Better Act has passed in the House, it has been stalled in the Senate — and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, during a Fox News Sunday appearance on December 19, declared that he is still a “no” vote on the BBB Act. It remains to be seen whether or not President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress will be able to come up with a new, altered version of BBB that Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, another centrist Democrat and key swing vote, will agree to support — and what a new version of the bill will propose with the child tax credit.

Watch The Entire Interview Below:

Article reprinted with permission from Alternet

coal miners joe manchin

Livid With Sen. Manchin, Coal Miners Say He's Turning His Back On Them

After DINO Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) selfishly torpedoed President Biden's Build Back Better plan, sending the markets in a tailspin on Monday and leaving millions of working poor parents out in the cold, the faux democratic Senator did what he always does when opposing a very popular piece of legislation from his own party: run to the media and claim the bill would harm his West Virginia constituents.

Worse yet, Manchin came even closer to becoming a full-blown Republican when he falsely claimed that parents would use the Child Tax Credit to buy drugs. One can make an argument that it's not the government's job to subsidize your family, especially when single working-class Americans aren't getting any such relief, but it's beyond disingenuous and ugly to believe that the monies are being used on drugs.

But the United Mine Workers are telling Manchin it’s time he works for them and support this bill.

"We urge Senator Manchin to revisit his opposition to this legislation and work with his colleagues to pass something that will help keep coal miners working, and have a meaningful impact on our members, their families and their communities,” Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, said in a statement Monday. These workers are justifiably sacred about job security and want help now. Build Back Better, for example, includes several tax incentives—which Manchin's Big Coal donors are fighting—to encourage manufacturers to build new facilities at the coal site and hire unemployed miners.

Manchin's opposition means “the potential for those jobs is significantly threatened,” Roberts said. And Phil Smith, the union’s chief lobbyist, highlighted this provision in an interview with The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, saying the bill would “provide a better chance of helping workers who will be dislocated by our transition to a decarbonized future—a dislocation that will likely continue either way—than not passing BBB will.” Adding, the bill “provides the potential for good jobs that our members who have been dislocated can get,” Smith said

These coal miners are not just upset with Senator Manchin's blatant disregard for the economic livelihoods, but they also believe in voting rights--a provision in BBB--and want him to get on board with that as well.

“I also want to reiterate our support for the passage of voting rights legislation as soon as possible, and strongly encourage Senator Manchin and every other Senator to be prepared to do whatever it takes to accomplish that,” Roberts said in the statement. “Anti-democracy legislators and their allies are working every day to roll back the right to vote in America. Failure by the Senate to stand up to that is unacceptable and a dereliction of their duty to the Constitution.”



In short, these coal miners vigorously believe in the BBB and are not going to let one Senator's massively large ego get in the way of their survival.

Child Tax Credit

Hey, Sen. Manchin! That Child Tax Credit Was Used For Food And Rent, Not Drugs

Sen. Joe Manchin reportedly doesn’t like the expanded child tax credit because parents might use the money to buy drugs. But in reality, he’s getting in the way of parents buying their kids food. That’s the primary way families have been spending the monthly checks, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

The expanded child tax credit, included in the American Rescue Plan, gives all but the highest-income families a $250-a-month payment for children aged six to 17, and $300 for children five and under. According to the Census data, 59 percent of families bought food with the money, 52 percent made utility payments, 45 percent paid the rent or the mortgage, 44 percent bought clothing, and 40 percent paid education costs. Nine out of 10 families spent money on at least one of those things. Paying down debt has been another widespread use

.

Another poll previously found that building emergency savings was a top plan for the money, while routine expenses, essential items for children, and food were runners-up.

Either way, the use of the money for food shows up in data finding a significant drop in food insecurity in households with kids—from 11 percent before the checks started going out to 8.4 percent after. And while people are unlikely to tell a pollster that they’re going to use the money on drugs, Manchin’s insistence that this was likely is a longtime right-wing trope that’s been disproven again and again. When Florida imposed drug testing for welfare benefits, so few people tested positive that the cost of the testing was higher than the number of benefits not distributed. Then-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was caught in a false claim that half of the unemployed people were testing positive for drugs, when in fact, of the people tested, less than one percent failed.

Many families in this country are hanging on by their fingernails. They don’t have enough or good enough food, they’re behind on the rent or the mortgage, their kids are outgrowing their clothes and there’s no money for replacements. That can be just as true of families with members working at the poverty-level federal minimum wage—which Manchin worries about raising too much—or of families with members laid-off or unable to work in the still-ongoing pandemic. For these families, the child tax credit has been a lifeline. Manchin has cut off that lifeline based on a lie.

Article reprinted with permission from Daily Kos


REPORT: Manchin Privately Said Poor Would Use Child Tax Credit To 'Buy Drugs'

REPORT: Manchin Privately Said Poor Would Use Child Tax Credit To 'Buy Drugs'

Appearing on Fox News last Sunday, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia declared that he remains a “no” vote on the Build Back Better Act of 2021 — a declaration that has infuriated many of his fellow Democrats. The centrist senator cited the cost of the bill and worries about inflation as reasons why he isn’t supporting the bill, but according to HuffPost reporters Tara Golshan and Arthur Delaney, he has privately said that he doesn’t trust poor people to use money wisely.

“In recent months,” Golshan and Delaney report, “Manchin has told several of his fellow Democrats that he thought parents would waste monthly child tax credit payments on drugs instead of providing for their children, according to two sources familiar with the senator’s comments. Continuing the child tax credit for another year is a core part of the Build Back Better legislation that Democrats had hoped to pass by the end of the year. The policy has already cut child poverty by nearly 30 percent.”

The reporters add, “Manchin’s private comments shocked several senators, who saw it as an unfair assault on his own constituents and those struggling to raise children in poverty. Manchin has also told colleagues he believes that Americans would fraudulently use the proposed paid sick leave policy, specifically saying people would feign being sick and go on hunting trips, a source familiar with his comments told HuffPost.”

President Joe Biden and Democrat in Congress have spent months negotiating with Manchin and another very centrist Democrat, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, over the Build Back Better Act, trying to determine what it will take to get them to vote for it. But when Manchin appeared on Fox News on December 19, it was painfully obvious that their efforts to persuade him hadn’t worked.

In an official statement that followed that Fox News appearance, Manchin said, “My Democratic colleagues in Washington are determined to dramatically reshape our society in a way that leaves our country even more vulnerable to the threats we face. I cannot take that risk with a staggering debt of more than $29 trillion and inflation taxes that are real and harmful to every hard-working American at the gasoline pumps, grocery stores and utility bills with no end in sight.”

Golshan and Delaney point out that according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, 91 percent of low-income households have been using the child tax credit for essential things such as food, clothing and school supplies. That data, according to Golshan and Delaney, counters the claim that the poor frequently use financial help to buy drugs.

“The concern that some parents would use the benefit for drugs echoes years of conservative talking points on welfare,” Golshan and Delaney note. “During Barack Obama’s presidency, Republicans in Congress and state legislatures around the country sought to add drug testing to requirements to nutrition assistance, unemployment benefits and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, which provides monthly cash benefits to poor parents.”