Tax Relief Act of 2005
TAX RELIEF ACT OF 2005 -- (Senate - November 17, 2005)
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Mrs. LINCOLN. Mr. President, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the gulf breezes blew back the curtains and America and the world very clearly saw the face of poverty in the United States. We and the rest of the world saw a situation where many of our poorest families, our American families, were left to fend for themselves--many not even able to afford a bus ticket out of town to evacuate.
We find ourselves today reconciling our priorities, something that hard-working American families do every day. They reconcile their budgets, they reconcile their priorities, to decide what is essential to that family and what is a luxury.
I do not believe we can have this discussion today without bringing up what I find, in our Nation, to be one of our greatest priorities and by far one of our greatest blessings, and that is our children. I believe we have an opportunity right now to help lift those families in Louisiana and, indeed, across this entire Nation. In 2001 and again in 2003, Senator Snowe and I worked together to make sure that working families of many low-income children were included in the child tax credit.
Unfortunately, a recent report, highlighted in the New York Times, shows that almost one-third of children do not qualify for that child tax credit because they are in families earning too low an income. When you break that finding down by race, it is even more disheartening. About half of all African-American children and half of all Latino children are left out of the full tax credit, child tax credit, because their family's earnings are too low to qualify.
We are talking about working families. To qualify for this tax credit, you have to be working and you have to have children.
I thank my colleagues for listening. I understand, due to the refundable nature of this credit, it is not germane to the reconciliation bill, and as a result, I will not ask for a vote, but I do ask our colleagues toremember what our priorities are tonight.
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