One of the provisions in the Biden/Harris $1.9 trillion dollar stimulus economic proposal is increases in both the child and earned income tax credits.
If passed in its current form, qualifying families with children would receive about $3000 in annual tax credits from the United States Government for this year.
If the tax credits (a plan proposed during the 2020 campaign by Colorado Senator Michael Bennet,) along with other stimulus measures like food stamp expansion and an increase in the federal wage, are made permanent in subsequent legislation, the effect would be to reduce the overall poverty rate and cut the child impoverished rate by at least a half.
If enacted, this would be a tremendous advance in social justice and propel middle-class growth in this country.
According to recent reporting by the Center for American Progress, eleven million children languish in poverty.
That is eleven million too many.
The child poverty rate in Arizona, depending on the source, ranges from 19 to 23 percent.
It would be unacceptable and tragic if it was 0.01 percent.
Commenting on the Biden/Harris Stimulus Proposals, David Lujan of the Arizona Center for Economic Progress wrote:
"President Biden has proposed a well designed, well-targeted COVID relief proposal that would help thousands of Arizonans and small businesses hit hard by the COVID pandemic. It hits all the important policy areas to address the ways the crisis has affected our state and the country, and it is appropriately sized given the magnitude of the pandemic’s health and economic impact. If enacted, it would reduce the widespread hardship that has left thousands of Arizona households unable to pay their rent and thousands of Arizona children facing hunger. I hope the package receives strong support from our congressional delegation."
Nobel Prize in Economics Winner and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote:
"And aid to children would achieve what proponents of the tax cut promised but failed to deliver: an improvement in America’s long-run economic prospects. If the children we help today grow up into healthier, more productive adults than they would otherwise — which they will — that will eventually mean higher G.D.P."
"And aid to children would also indirectly help the budget because those children would later pay more in taxes and be less likely to call on safety net programs. These fiscal benefits might even be big enough that helping children pays for itself, and in any case, they mean that the true cost of aiding children, even in narrowly fiscal terms, would be less than it might appear."
"All in all, then, increased aid to families with children is a really good idea. It would immediately improve millions of Americans’ lives, it would make us stronger in the future, and it would have only modest budget costs."
And how to pay for this progressive socially and economically uplifting proposal?
Below are the names of some of the large corporations that did not pay any federal taxes in 2018:
- Amazon
- Chevon
- Delta Airlines
- Fed Ex
- Goodyear Tire
- Haliburton
- Honeywell
- JetBlue Airways
- MGM Resorts
- Netflix
- Prudential Financial
- Starbucks
- Whirlpool
How about getting these companies to pay their fair share to Uncle Sam?
How about taking away the Trump Tax Cuts on the richest in this country?
It is time to do what is right for the nation's poor and give them a ladder to climb out of poverty instead of crumbs to subsist there?
And if you hear Republicans whine about how this will add to the nation's debt, tell them to take their fiscal hypocrisy and go to hell.
Contact your Representative or Senator and tell them to support the Biden/Harris Stimulus Plan.
Cut Child Poverty in Half and start the process to eliminate it forever.
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