Manchin is now screwing with the Child Tax Credit...gotta keep protecting him though!
The one article I had a chance to read on this said he wanted a cap at $60,000 for the family income, which basically means this is a pure red state money grab.
"I don't care if my people get this thing, the important thing is that you don't."
Sure, and then instead of a tax credit it becomes a welfare program, which the next Repub Congress kills entirely.
If Joe Manchin's effort to shrink the child tax credit takes effect, some 190,000 children in West Virginia might lose out, and the state's residents might lose over a quarter billion dollars in purchasing power,
https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1450120877773840385
I love that 60k is wealthy...unless it comes to takes where often 3-4 times that is considered "Barely Middle Class".
That's two people working at minimum wage full time. Jeebus.
That's two people working at minimum wage full time. Jeebus.
Only if the minimum wage was $15/hour...
In addition, we make everything some kind of Rube Goldberg device as to who qualifies, the hoops they have to jump through to prove qualification and receive whatever it is, and how they receive it, how it's administered, instead of just giving people the benefit, and then clawing it back from the people who don't really need it with higher taxes.
Everything doesn't have to be so complicated.
Means testing is very rarely worth it.
I agree. This is something I have completely changed my mind on.
The only way I'd reconsider is based on simple cutoffs like SS taxes. But even then you get stupid cutoffs that don't make sense and never move.
You have to cap benefits, but that's different than means testing. You can't have Richie Rich walking off with $20M a year in Social Security. But you can certainly cap benefits at something insane like $1M/yr, just so you never pinch a fat white middle class as-s in the door, which is what always brings it all down.
And, obviously, uncap the tax. Indeed, progressively tax everything above a fairly high personal exemption (say $50k a person and $20k/kid) and general fund everything on the collection side.
Joe Manchin is a DINOsaur.