Why I Opposed the Tax Bill
Floor Speech
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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ms. DeLauro for putting together this Special Order.
Mr. Speaker, I felt really compelled to come to the floor because 1 minute last night during the tax debate did not seem to be an adequate amount of time to explain why I adamantly opposed the tax bill in its current iteration.
Mr. Speaker, what I have been told is that a half a loaf is just better than no loaf at all; that this tax bill was a compromise, and that somehow as a legislative body and as legislators, we ought to be used to compromising, but I just didn't want to capitulate.
I didn't mind compromising, but I didn't want to capitulate. It wasn't just that we passed this tax bill that supposedly was an improvement for the child tax credit, but we passed $600 billion of tax breaks for businesses, which is the job of the Ways and Means Committee.
Mr. Speaker, I don't know what Members of this body have against poor children. Are we in some sort of Dickensian reality here, like in a novel by Charles Dickens, where 5-year-olds have to go to work to take care of themselves?
Part of what is flawed about the so-called improvement in the child tax credit is that it relegates children's well-being and their ability to get a supplemental income based on their parent's income.
If you are married and you are a stay-at-home mom and your husband makes $399,000 a year, I am happy that we provide you the full credit because, even at that income level, we ought to recognize the tremendous expense that it is to raise children. We ought to consider the benefits of providing shelter and good food and good nutrition for children, but why is it that those children in that home are more deserving of a supplement than a child who lives in a household where a parent makes less than $22,000 a year?
Why?
Why is it that this body perceives that the lowest income children living in those households, that their parents need to put in a greater work effort?
Well, I asked the Joint Committee on Taxation to do a little arithmetic for me, so that I could sort of understand the thinking behind what my colleagues were saying. They said people need to work. Children need to see their parents going to work before they just get this welfare money and this free money.
Well, under current law, if a single mom gets out there and gets herself a minimum wage job, doing her part, she is only required under our welfare policy to work 20 hours a week, but if she gets out there and finds herself two minimum wage jobs paying 7.25 an hour and she goes and does Uber or Instacart after she finishes her two part-time jobs, then and only then will she be eligible for the tax credit.
I don't know who takes care of her kids while she is working more than 40 hours per week in order to qualify for the child tax credit. I mean, that is just criminal.
As my colleagues have pointed out, in this same package, we have corporations that are getting stuff like research expensing. I think R&D is a legitimate tax break, but there is research expensing that can hardly be called ``research.''
We also provide billions of dollars for bonus depreciation, which is really quite wasteful in our economy for companies to be able to buy new equipment year after year after year because they can expense it and write it off. And while they are able to write off their business expenses, we are writing off millions of children whose parents don't have tax liability.
So companies can have no tax liability, pay no taxes, and get $600 billion and parents, who have no tax liability, get nothing.
Will the gentlewoman yield?
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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. As a refundable tax credit, there are about 61 million children who are able to benefit from this provision, and yet I see through all of the talking points and literature and analyses of this proposal, that we are just supposed to be happy with this half loaf because now 16 million kids and 400,000 more are going to benefit from this proposal.
Is this correct?
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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Sixty-one million children?
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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. We pushed more kids into poverty.
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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Will the gentlewoman yield?
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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. As you mentioned, I had a proposal, a compromise.
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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. It was a compromise. It was not what I wanted. I wanted a fully refundable tax credit, but I was looking at our current work requirements for this tax credit and I said to myself--even though a work requirement really defies the whole purpose of a child supplement--if we were to compromise and had a work requirement, why would someone, who through no-fault of their own, finds themselves working for $7.25 an hour; they are subject to rules under our welfare reform protocols, under our TANF legislation, to work 20 hours a week when they have young children.
I had the Joint Committee on Taxation do an analysis and if a woman with two kids worked 20 hours a week, did everything that was expected of her, she still would not qualify for this tax credit.
And if she wanted to get a fully refundable tax credit, she would have to neglect her children in order to do it. She would have to work more than 40 hours, Mr. Speaker, in order to qualify.
That is slavery, you all. I mean, why are we continuing to cling to these old models of financing our economy and deciding that women, who by definition are typically single parents struggling to raise their kids, must work more than 40 hours in order to receive a benefit from their government?
Why is that?
What do they have against these poor children?
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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. For childcare.
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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. And it incentivized them to work.
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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, my only proposal was to have a more generous phase-in.
If you are going to require people to work, why not allow them to have 40 percent of the credit after the first $2,500 of income. That way, someone who was working and trying to meet all of the program requirements, a TANF recipient, could go to work and feel some dignity--as they claim that you get--some dignity going to work, making work pay.
They go and do their 20 hours, and they are able to have time to deal with their children and help them with their homework.
They get the earned income tax credit. They are playing by the rules, and all we do is just move the goal post further and further away. Under this bill you cannot work your way out of poverty, and we are going to make sure you stay there.
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