Child Tax Credit Improvement Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, across America, there are many young couples devoting time to determining the name of their newborn--a happy experience--but I can tell you there is no couple in America that devotes more time to selecting names than our Republican colleagues.

Much of this session, that name-making has been about naming post offices, because if they weren't naming post offices and beginning to rename post offices, they would run out of excuses for doing nothing on the great challenges that our country faces. But the essence of Republican name-making creativity is directed toward bills like this. They are so good at applying names to their bills and so sorry at what goes in the bills.

Today's Child Tax Credit Improvement Act only lacks the fact that it represents no improvement for the working poor. It neither improves the child tax credit nor improves the lives of millions of children living at or near poverty.

Under this bill, a single mom with two children who works full-time at the minimum wage loses almost $2,000 a year. This bill does deserve a name. I think the best one would be the ``Pushing More People Into Poverty Act,'' since its net effect is to push 12 million people, including 6 million children, right into poverty or deeper into it. That includes 400,000 veteran and Armed Forces families who would lose all or part of their child tax credit.

The Republicans may curse Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty on this big anniversary for it, but they continue to wage a war on those in poverty, especially America's most needy children.

A leading advocacy group, First Focus Campaign for Children, reports that our Federal investment in our children has fallen 60 percent faster than overall Federal spending. This analysis shows that small children are
the big losers in the Federal budget battle because their voices aren't heard the loudest.

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