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Expansion of child tax credit left hanging

WASHINGTON - Congress left for the July Fourth recess without completing a bill to let millions of minimum-wage families share in the child tax credit rebates this summer. Key negotiators hope they can get it done by July 25, when rebate checks start to go out to middle-income families.

"That would be my intention," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Friday. "We're going to start getting together right now."

The credit's strongest supporters questioned whether good intentions will be enough to close the gap between House and Senate views on the issue. They called on the president to step in and broker a compromise.

House Democratic leaders had asked Republicans to keep lawmakers in session until they completed the bill. "We find it unconscionable that members can leave town without addressing this egregious error," they wrote to House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

But both chambers adjourned anyway, worn out from weeks of intense debate over a Medicare prescription drug benefit. After a week off for the July Fourth holiday, they will have three weeks to start and finish negotiations over the child credit.

Political pressure to expand the child tax credit began after the president signed a tax cut in May that will send rebates worth up to $400 per child to middle-class families in late July and August. The check reflects a jump in the credit from $600 to $1,000 set retroactively to the beginning of the year.

Critics of that tax cut want to make the credit more generous for the roughly 6.5-million families that earn salaries ranging from full-time minimum wage, or about $10,500, to more than $26,000. Those workers do not pay enough income tax to take advantage of the bigger credits.

The House and Senate both passed versions of a bill that make the child credit available to more low-income families by letting them claim a refund worth 15 percent of their income over $10,500, up to $1,000 per child.

The bills differ in other fundamental ways.

The Senate legislation would cost the Treasury nothing because its $10-billion cost is offset by an extension of customs fees. That chamber's deficit watchdogs blocked leaders from exacerbating budget shortfalls.

The House opted to extend the child credit through the decade and make it available to more wealthy couples, for a total cost of $82-billion.

WASHINGTON - The House passed legislation early Friday which seeks to fix intelligence problems that became apparent with both the Sept. 11 attacks and recent FBI spy scandals.

The bill authorizing intelligence programs for fiscal 2004 would boost information sharing among federal, state and local officials and strengthen language and analytical skills at intelligence agencies, all problems identified by a congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

It also calls for new steps to protect the United States from spies, including the creation of an FBI counterintelligence office to investigate spying within the bureau.

Passed by a 410-9 vote, the House measure still has to be reconciled with a bill awaiting action in the Senate.