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URGE YOUR REPRESENTATIVE TO SUPPORT FAMILIES BY INCREASING THE STATE EITC
The Senate passed their budget on Thursday June 19th and the House rejected it, sending the process into conference. Senate and House conference committee members began meeting Friday, June 20th to at the least start working through their differences. One of the major differences in the 2 budgets is their tax cut plans. Both agreed to $50 million in tax cuts, but the House plan includes the EITC increase and the Senate's does not. In fact, their budget does not detail any tax cuts and only included a line for $50m in tax cuts to be passed in a separate bill. So, while their budget did not explicitly leave out the EITC they also did not explicitly embrace it and from what we continue to hear, the Senate leadership does not support the increased EITC for at least 2 (ridiculous) reasons:
1- some (led by Sen. Hoyle) are still concerned about the refundability and think that people will take advantage of the credit. We know that this is not true as the IRS has said the oft used error rate is overstated and that the majority of error in the federal EITC is just that- error, not fraud.
2- many think we should not tinker with a new policy that has not yet been implemented- they think we do not even know if it will work yet, so why increase it. Well, the reason why is that we know it works. The federal EITC has been an effective program for more than 33 years. 23 other states have EITCs, many since the 80's and the trend in all of those states has been to increase the % when revenues permit.
We have to make sure they hear our voices on this issue! Call or write today; To ACT NOW click here!