The bipartisan agreement between the House and the Senate tackles priorities for both parties.

The bipartisan agreement between the House and the Senate tackles priorities for both parties.

Senior lawmakers in Congress announced a bipartisan deal Tuesday to expand the child tax credit and provide a series of tax breaks for businesses.

The $78 billion tax agreement between House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith, R-Mo., and Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., caps months of negotiating and pursuing common ground in the divided Congress.

…

The deal, details of which were reported earlier by NBC News, would enhance refundable child tax credits in an attempt to provide relief to families that are struggling financially and those with multiple children. It would also lift the tax credit’s $1,600 refundable cap and adjust it for inflation.

The new child tax credit policy would benefit about 16 million kids in low-income families, according to an analysis by the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “The expansion would meaningfully reduce child poverty,” CBPP wrote. “In the first year, the expansion would lift as many as 400,000 children above the poverty line. 3 million more children would be made less poor as their incomes rise closer to the poverty line.”

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    78·
    10 months ago

    If the Democrats don’t have the balls to stand up to Republicans now do we really think they’ll stand up for anything if Trump wins?

    The way they’re hanging Trump and Fascism over us like the Sword of Damocles really shows how little they intend to lift a finger to save average US citizens if Trump becomes President again. They’re too busy cutting deals with the people who would kill us right now and too busy going “Well they had a majority, and that’s how democracy works, and we can’t really stop them from making laws that are clearly undemocratic and then using them against the citizenry. Our hands are tied!” They’re really saying that if the country wants to vote to end democracy, that’s okay with them. They don’t want to interrupt democracy in action by getting in the way of ending democracy.

    It’s not like people like Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell are actually buddy-buddy or anything. Oh wait. /s

    They are implicitly admitting that there are no guardrails and they do not plan on being a guardrail themselves if Trump returns to power. Otherwise, why would be so important to stop him “at the ballot box?”

    They’re admitting that if we wins, even illegitimately, that they will let Democracy fold. What a bunch of giant fucking pussies who are going to let a fascist stomp on the face of their constituents until they die. Why? Because we didn’t vote hard enough. The national Democrats won’t accept any responsibility for their lack of action leading up to fascism.

    I mean, to this day, Hillary Clinton has not once apologized for elevating Donald Trump as a “pied piper” candidate as part of her campaign strategy. She damn well helped him along but blames us for her losing, despite her winning the popular vote.

    Just expect more of that, politicians blaming you for fascism when it comes for you.

    What a joke.

    • Xhieron@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      Sir, this is a Wendy’s.

      Joking aside, what should they have done instead? Nothing? Because that’s the alternative. Is your position that these families would be better off if they got nothing instead of anything? The Democrats are making a bet here that they can campaign on expanding the child tax credit. Would reasonable, humane Americans prefer they’d gotten more? Of course, but the divided government isn’t a hypothetical: it’s reality. We have fascists in government because our moron neighbors put them there, so now we have to deal with them. I don’t like it either, but the response can’t be to throw up our hands, whine, and then lose when the citizens rightly decide the Democrats can’t govern. This isn’t a choice between sweeping progressive legislation and watered down half-measures. It’s a choice between any legislation and nothing.

      The fascists aren’t an accident. They’re on the Hill because Americans put them there, and even if the Democrats sweep the elections in November, there is no scenario in which they do so overwhelmingly well that all the MAGA lunatics are no longer in government. These pricks are here to stay. And worse, they care a lot more about winning than governing, and this bill is a pretty clear demonstration that that fact is absolutely not true of both parties, and it’s not even true of the rest of the GOP, corrupt and compromised though it may be.

      Most Americans–myself included–would rather have any improvement to the child tax credit than for the Democrats to engage in the same my-way-or-the-highway bullshit posturing of the QOP. We’ve seen where the moral highroading and stand-on-principle-until-the-axe-falls bullshit has gotten us. How about some actual government for a change?