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Press Releases
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NO TAX RELIEF CHECKS FOR MORE THAN ONE MILLION
CHILDREN OF TEACHERS, NURSES AND THEIR AIDES
Hundreds Gather to Tell White House, Congress: Time Is Running Out! |
WASHINGTON - The postal service will skip the mailboxes of one million children of teachers, nurses and their aides when they start to deliver child tax credit checks this week, according to a report released today by the Children's Defense Fund and the Center for Community Change. Most children of hard- working sales workers, janitors and maids, cooks, and farming families will not receive checks. Help for 12 million children in hard-working families, including 260,000 children of active duty armed service personnel, was excluded at the last minute by the Bush Administration in its massive new tax law even though they pay payroll taxes, state and local sales taxes, property taxes, or excise taxes.
Hundreds of young people whose families, friends and neighbors will not receive checks today surrounded the White House to demand that President George Bush not delay just treatment for their families. The group later joined Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Children's Defense Fund President Marian Wright Edelman on Capitol Hill in a rally to call on Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) to not go home for summer recess without helping them.
"Friday, the very day child tax credit checks will be sent out, Members of Congress plan to return to their districts for the August break. Republican House leaders are ready to go home without extending the tax credit," said Rep. Pelosi. "Democrats won't leave the House without it."
Edelman told the crowd that White House leadership is needed to ensure that Congress extends tax relief to families who need help the most without increasing the deficit, as the House child tax credit bill proposes.
"We must give child credits where credit is due. Strengthening our nation means investing in all of our children, not just well-off children," said Edelman. "The Bush Administration promised families checks this summer. Instead of tax relief checks in their mailboxes, millions of hard-working, tax-paying families get an empty promise from the Bush Administration."
The Senate approved a revision of the tax cut law signed by the President that would provide an additional $154 on average per child to the excluded 12 million children in hard working, low-income families. One hundred mothers with children in strollers last month tried to visit Rep. DeLay to protest the House child tax credit bill, which holds the 12 million children left behind hostage to more tax cuts for higher income families who don't need them. The new tax cut law provides each of America's 190,000 millionaires an average of $93,500.
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Joint Findings with Center for Community Change:
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The mission of the Children's Defense Fund is to Leave No Child Behind and to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. CDF provides a strong, effective voice for all the children of America who cannot vote, lobby, or speak for themselves. We pay particular attention to the needs of poor and minority children and those with disabilities. CDF educates the nation about the needs of children and encourages preventive investment before they get sick, into trouble, drop out of school, or suffer family breakdown. CDF began in 1973 and is a private, nonprofit organization supported by foundation and corporate grants and individual donations. We have never taken government funds. |
