White House Puts Human Face on Child Tax-Credit Debate
WASHINGTON — They are working people one and all, but they make so little money that they pay little or no federal income taxes. Some are teachers, some are young police officers, others are blue-collar workers, and they earn about $24,000 a year or less.
These are the people who will be at the center of a huge argument between President Clinton and congressional Republicans as negotiators gather today to begin ironing out their differences over the details of the first major federal tax cut in 16 years.
Many issues divide the two sides, but one of the most politically explosive is a dispute over whether the bill's cornerstone benefit--a $500-per-child credit for families--should go to a large swath of the lower-middle class.
That dispute, which the White House escalated Thursday with an event spotlighting some of those who would lose the credit under GOP tax plans, thrusts to center stage the hard-pressed families who have been the most volatile voters in U.S. politics through the 1990s. And it underscores the most basic, politically charged question about the emerging tax bill: Who should benefit?
Republicans generally say the children's tax credit should go only to families who pay federal income taxes. Clinton staunchly opposes that idea because it would deny the credit to low-income working families who, while they may pay no income taxes, do pay substantial amounts in the payroll taxes that support Social Security and Medicare.
Gingrich Rejects Idea, Calls It New 'Welfare'
The issue is already inspiring some of the sharpest rhetoric of the tax debate. Republican leaders, such as House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), have accused Clinton of seeking to provide a form of "welfare" by allowing families with no income-tax liability access to the tax credit.
"We don't think a tax cut bill designed to help people who pay taxes should be turned into a welfare bill," Gingrich has declared.
The administration insists that argument is demeaning to low-income families who define themselves by the fact that they do work. To underscore this point, Vice President Al Gore and Democratic congressional leaders appeared at a news conference Thursday with working people--including a police officer, a medical technician and a receptionist--who would not be eligible for the children's credit under the GOP plan.
"These are the families that should have been first in getting a tax cut, not the ones that get left behind," Gore said.
