White House gets behind expanded child tax credit

The expanded child tax credit that congressional Republicans dropped for the working poor moved one step closer to reinstatement yesterday as the Bush White House endorsed the Democratic proposal.

As you’ll recall, the Senate already passed a measure to allow low-income families to enjoy the tax credit. The House, specifically Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), had indicated that he’s satisfied with the $350 billion tax cut from three weeks ago, and isn’t inclined to pass any relief for the working poor.

It looks like the White House read a poll or something, because now they’re on board with the Democratic bill passed by the Senate.

White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters yesterday that the president supports the Senate bill and wants to sign it into law as soon as possible.

“His advice to the House Republicans is to pass [the Senate bill], to send it to him so he can sign it,” Fleischer said. “He understands they’re going to take a look at some other tax matters but he wants to make certain that this does not get slowed down, bogged down. He wants to sign it.”

So, will House Republicans follow the White House’s marching orders? Not exactly.

DeLay indicated last week that he’d consider the Democratic plan for the expanded child tax credit, but only as part of a broader tax cut plan that offers new and generous benefits to the wealthy — who, of course, already benefited disproportionately from the last two tax cut plans.

In other words, it would cost $3.5 billion to allow low-income families, who work and pay taxes (but not income taxes), to enjoy the same expanded child tax credit as middle- and upper-income families. DeLay would probably sign off on this, but only if he can get some more goodies for his wealthy buddies.

Fleischer said yesterday, “We’ll work with the House, the House’s ideas, but the president thinks at its core, what the Senate has done is the right thing.”

DeLay seemed to be saying in response, “We’ll take this under advisement.”

A DeLay spokesman told the LA Times that DeLay was “encouraged that the White House remained open to new House ideas.” Translation: We’re going ahead with our plan and it doesn’t matter if the president prefers the Senate plan because he’ll sign our bill into law if it reaches his desk.

In fact, the Times report also mentioned that one “senior House aide” complained that the White House was “reacting too defensively” to the controversy. The aide added, “We are going to do this methodically and do the right thing and cut taxes for people who pay taxes.”

This is telling for a variety of reasons. First, the comment reflects that the House GOP is simply disinterested in offering relief to the working poor because they don’t pay income taxes, as if being too poor to pay income taxes makes them lucky. Second, the working poor do “pay taxes,” and if Republicans really wanted to help all taxpayers, they wouldn’t leave the working poor behind. And lastly, by whining about the White House reacting “defensively” to this flap, the House GOP also seems convinced they can blow off low-income families and get away with it.

You can expect to see a fat new tax cut plan working its way through the House sometime soon. It will almost certainly include the $3.5 billion for the child tax credit, but it will include billions more for the only constituency the GOP really cares about — the wealthy.