Providing for Consideration of Senate Amendment to H.R. Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, Providing for Proceedings During the Period From December Through January and for Other Purposes

Floor Speech

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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this rule and to express great disappointment with the underlying tax extenders bill.

While the tax extenders bill makes the expansion of the child tax credit permanent, along with the earned income tax credit and the American opportunity tax credit, it fails to index the value of the child tax credit to inflation. By the end of this decade, this will result in 750,000 children falling back into poverty.

In the last big tax deal, Congress made the estate tax cut both permanent and indexed to inflation. Who does this benefit? The children of the millionaires and billionaires.

Yet, this bill fails to provide the same benefit to working families. It means that 7,450 estates nationwide are the beneficiaries of the estate tax. Nineteen million families and many, many more millions of children would have benefited from indexing the child tax credit.

Congress has also provided for many more provisions of the Tax Code to be indexed: income tax rates, the adoption credit, the earned income tax credit, the low-income housing credit, the exemption amount for the alternative minimum tax, the standard deduction, the overall limitation on itemized deductions, cafeteria plans, transportation fringe benefits, adoption assistance programs, the personal exemption, medical savings account, the maximum deduction for interest on education loans, foreign-earned income exclusion, estate tax exemption, gift tax exemption, and the list goes on and on.

No family in the United States should have to struggle to raise a child. By failing to index the value of the child tax credit, we allow the benefit of the child tax credit to slowly erode away.

Too many hardworking people are still not earning enough to make ends meet in this country. Middle class wages are stagnant or they are in decline. We need to do whatever we can to support working people. Working and middle class families cannot afford to continue to see the value of their child tax credit decline.

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