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U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay played a disgusting and cynical game with the working poor on Thursday. Grant $1 in tax cuts to families who work but can't make ends meet? Okay, but only if you give $22 for people who need it far less.
This is how DeLay chose to play the game, how he chose to answer the Senate's plan to restore a child tax credit that had been quietly stripped from the working poor in a $350-billion tax cut President Bush signed on May 28. Instead of simply restoring the $3.5-billion tax credit for the working poor, DeLay pushed through an $82-billion answer, largely on a party-line vote, as his way of showing who's in charge.
"Our critics talk a very big game," DeLay said, defiantly. "But this offers them a chance to put their money where their mouth is. Do you support a child tax credit, or are you against it?"
Most reasonable people do support an extension of the child tax credit to include families that earn between $10,500 to $26,625 a year. But that would cost the treasury only $3.5-billion. The House would tack on another $78.5-billion worth of breaks for families that earn $150,000 or more a year, which just happens to be the salary range of a U.S. representative.
To gain the full measure of DeLay's hypocrisy, though, one must retrace a few steps. Last month, the two chambers adopted a $350-billion tax cut that was billed as an economic stimulus but was more a gift to stock traders and millionaires.
As the two chambers quietly worked through the final details of the tax-cut plan, DeLay's negotiators were the ones who argued for abandoning the tax credit for the working poor. Given the limits that were established, they argued, the $3.5-billion was too much and had to go. By contrast, the new House bill would add 22 times as much to the federal deficit, and DeLay pretends the Senate will cheerfully accept it. Of note, the House bill offers no reduction in spending or increase in revenue by way of payment for the inflated tax cuts.
The effect of the House vote, of course, is to nullify the Senate's attempt to restore the tax credit. The two chambers now have to fight over their vastly different approaches, which means the checks being issued this summer to other working Americans will miss the mailboxes of homes with nearly 12-million poor children. Meanwhile, roughly $90-billion will be distributed over the next two years to some 200,000 households with incomes above $1-million.
President Bush, who previously said he supported the Senate's effort, backed off on Thursday and merely asked the two chambers to "quickly resolve their differences." In Washington, this is how the game is played. This is how the poor lose, again.