For The Needy, A Poor Excuse (Cynthia Tucker Alert)

Atlanta Journal & Constitution ^ | 05/31/03 | Cynthia Tucker

[kcordell]

For the needy, a poor excuse

It is unfashionable to be poor in America. Even workers just a paycheck away from being poverty-stricken themselves -- an illness, a layoff, a car accident away from having the electricity turned off -- are contemptuous of those just beneath them on the socioeconomic ladder.

The Horatio Alger myth is so powerful that one's fortune is either in the bank or in the near future. Hard times are just a temporary condition -- or so people believe. A Time-CNN poll during the 2000 presidential elections asked voters whether they were in the top 1 percent of income earners. Nineteen percent responded that they were, a statistical impossibility. Who said it's lonely at the top?

Perhaps that explains why it has been remarkably easy for the GOP to launch an all-out assault on the poor. With little opposition, the Bush administration and hard-right Republicans in Congress are squeezing or eliminating essential programs that assist the poor -- from the HOPE VI program, which has razed slums and rebuilt them as mixed-income communities, to Medicaid, which provides health care.

Now, according to The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research group, Congress has excluded millions of families earning just above minimum wage from the increased child tax credit in the new $350 billion tax cut bill.

President Bush's second tax cut, like his first, mostly benefits the rich; the president didn't bother to extend the increased child tax credit, from $600 to $1,000, to families earning minimum wage, though more affluent families will receive it. The Senate, however, included minimum wage families in their version of the bill. That tax break was among the few provisions in the gargantuan tax cut bill that even resembled economic stimulus, since working families are more likely than the rich to spend the money right away on necessities.

But in the last-minute negotiations between ultra-conservative Republicans and their moderate counterparts, millions of families earning between $10,500 and $26,625 annually were once again cut out of the increased child tax credit. In other words, the refund checks, which will average $400 per child, will not go to those who need it most. (Families earning less than $10,500 a year were not eligible for the tax credits because they pay no federal income taxes.) It was a deeply cynical maneuver.

Let's be clear: The families denied the child tax credit work for a living. Still, they barely earn enough to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. It's difficult to pay the bills when you earn little more than $5.15 an hour.

Yet, those workers do essential jobs: They feed, bathe and change the elderly in nursing homes; they dig ditches for construction sites; they clean bathrooms in airports and school buildings; they scrub floors in hotels; they cut poultry and pork on grueling assembly lines. They are hardly layabouts.

Their labor was once considered honorable. Hardworking men and women who earned a living with their hands and their backs were celebrated as the heart and soul of the American economy. But that was before Ronald Reagan changed the terms of political debate, castigating the poor as lazy, un-American louts responsible for their own sorry lot. It was the most dramatic refashioning of political thought since FDR's New Deal delivered working Americans to the Democratic Party.

Senate negotiators claimed they couldn't extend the increase in child tax credits to minimum-wage families, which would have cost an additional $3.5 billion, because they had to hold the tax cut package to $350 billion. These are the same people who, this year, will spend $300 billion they don't have -- the largest budget deficit in history. It's ironic that the Monopoly money won't stretch all the way to the hands that really need it.

But that was never seriously considered. Not in America -- where, if the myth is to be believed, those poor families just need to dig a few more ditches to earn their own stock dividends.

[kcordell]

Good ol' Cynthia.

[kcordell]

I forgot. For those of you who enjoy conversing with Cynthia: Cynthia Tucker

[americafirst]

"Let's be clear: The families denied the child tax credit work for a living."

Let's be clear Cynthia: The famlies denied the child tax credit don't pay taxes. You are advocating redistributing my wealth and that's un-American.

[Ken522]

Cynthia Tucker is an ignorant doofus!

[Fzob]

Hysterical DemoRat's really are funny. The longer Cynthia write the dumber she seems to get.

[netmilsmom]

If one earns a minimum wage of $5.15 an hour for a 40 hour week, the total is $10,712. If you are earning less than that, you are not working a 40 hour week or are in a position to get tips (lots more in unclaimed money). If you are getting tips, shut up, you have a great tax free gig. If you are not working 40 hours, get a full time job or a second job.
In the 80's I worked three jobs to make 40 hours. It's not that hard.
Plus, at minimum wage, you get food stamps if you have children and you eat better than I do.

[goldstategop]

The real crime that Cindy doesn't mention is liberals punish the poor for seeking to become wealthy.

[taildragger]

Cynthia,

Have you ever heard of the Earned Income Tax Credit?

What a Dewfus.

Please send this women the $149.00 to take the H & R Block Tax Course so she can learn the truth.

Opp's I am, sorry I forgot the truth doesn't matter it is all about the agenda.

Sarcasm Off.

[sauropod]

Notice how she puts out the "Center for Budget and Policy Priorities" as merely a "research group" instead of a wholly-owned subsidiary of the 'RAT party (which they are).

from the "Ultra-Conservative" Sauropod.

[OpusatFR]

". Even workers just a paycheck away from being poverty-stricken themselves -- an illness, a layoff, a car accident away from having the electricity turned off -- are contemptuous of those just beneath them on the socioeconomic ladder."

Isn't that just telling?

I worked as a janitor, cut and sold wood, cleaned construction sites, and took any day job I could during hard times. I never encountered anyone who looked down on me. I don't look down on honest work at all. In fact, most people I meet don't even think that anyone is ~beneath~ them.

Could it be that Cynthia Tucker is another effete liberal snob who projects her disdain and snobbery on other people?

[Brian Allen]

If ever proof is required the manifestation of evil we euphamize as "liberalism" is a psychosis, we may be assured it will be hurled in our faces every time this ugly, viscious, dumb and insanely-envy-motivated creature opens its craw and projectile-vomits the putred, pathologically-hatred-and-rage-driven content of whatever part of its bowel passes for its brain.

[xrp]

Families earning less than $10,000/year shouldn't be families. I couldn't imagine raising a child or children on $10,000/year. That's child abuse, the children should be put into foster homes.

Hey Cynthia, what's wrong with tax cuts and rebates going to those who PAY the taxes? If it weren't for the EVIL RICH, America wouldn't have small businesses, which employ about 70% of Americans.

[FITZ]

It's difficult to pay the bills when you earn little more than $5.15 an hour.

Yes except at $5.15 an hour, you aren't paying taxes and shouldn't get a tax cut.

[UpNAtEm]

How come we never see Cynthia Tucker and Cynthia McKinney together? Hmmm...

[FITZ]

Families earning less than $10,000/year shouldn't be families.

They almost never are "families". If they were ---both the FATHER and the mother working for minimum wage could bring in $20,000 a year.

[georgiabelle]

--Yet, those workers do essential jobs: They feed, bathe and change the elderly in nursing homes; they dig ditches for construction sites; they clean bathrooms in airports and school buildings; they scrub floors in hotels; they cut poultry and pork on grueling assembly lines.--


No, no Cynthia, you are confused. Our poor aren't doing these jobs. The illeagals are doing these jobs because none of the American Citizens want to do them.

I do hope this clears the matter up. Now there is no problem. Illegals don't pay taxes or get tax cuts. They just take all the freebies that our poor should be getting. Maybe you should be worrying about that.

[Stultis]

The Horatio Alger myth is so powerful that one's fortune is either in the bank or in the near future. Hard times are just a temporary condition -- or so people believe.

And that attitude just steams you, doesn't it, Cynthia? Imagine, the "little people" believing that they can advance their own condition, when you know better: that they need the goverment to help them. ('Course that "help" means destroying their opportunities in the private sector -- good paying jobs -- at the expense of more goverment programs. IOW, making poverty "sustainable".)

the president didn't bother to extend the increased child tax credit, from $600 to $1,000, to families earning minimum wage

Uh, yeah. That would be families who not only don't pay any income tax, but are already picking up a few thousand dollars in "earned income tax credits".

[Chad Fairbanks]

Well, if people making Minimum Wage actually PAY taxes, then they should get a refund - if not, then too bad so sad...

[redbaiter]

But that was before Ronald Reagan changed the terms of political debate, castigating the poor as lazy, un-American louts responsible for their own sorry lot.

I doubt this chick has read one word Reagan wrote. She should do a reality check and read Reagan: In His Own Hand. Reading this was an eye-opener, and I thought I knew what Reagan was all about.

[psjones]

The child tax credit is only offered to couples who make around 110,000 or less, that's what I would consider middle class. These reports conveniently gloss over the fact that many of these low income families have zero tax liability and are able to get money from the government thanks to the earned income credit.