Iowans Deserve Much Better Than What Grassley & Ernst Deliver These Days
48,000 Iowa kids denied a chance to escape poverty as Iowa senators play politics with child tax credit bill
Iowa’s US Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Joni Ernst (R-IA) are great talkers about their commitment to helping and supporting Iowa families. When it comes to walking that talk, however, not so much.
They can often been found, as they were this past week, doing just the opposite, voting against what they claim to support. The Senate vote on expanding the child tax credit - an expansion both Iowa Senators opposed and helped block this past week - is a case in point.
Pure partisanship is often the explanation, and it certainly was in this case.
It’s no longer surprising to find Grassley choosing partisanship over country. He’s made a career of making such choices in his last years in the Senate. Those who hoped he might end his Senate career with his once at least perceived reputation for “bipartisanship” intact - rather than in tatters as it is today - gave up that dream long ago.
Stealing a Supreme Court seat - at the command of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell - and the catastrophic loss of an important constitutional right for women that grew from that theft will be his longest lasting legacy.
Joni Ernst marching to a purely partisan drumbeat on the child tax credit vote last week was far from the first time she has opted for raw partisanship . She’s seeking a Republican Senate leadership position in the new Congress next year so her priority now appears to be to impress her fellow Republican Senators, not Iowa voters. But it is still surprising, if only for its obviousness.
The issue here was a bi-partisan proposal to expand the child tax credit. It passed the US House in January on a 357 - 70 vote.
Strengthening the child tax credit was one of President Joe Biden’s top priorities in his Covid relief package. For 2021, Biden raised the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,000 for kids under 6 and to $3,600 for kids age 6-17. It provided a much needed influx of cash to families reeling from effects of the Covid pandemic which shot unemployment rates up to as much as 14.8 percent and virtually collapsed the economy.
His plan also made the credit fully refundable. Prior to Biden’s plan taking effect, 27 million families received less than the full child tax credit because their incomes were too low to qualify for the full amount, including half of those who lived in rural areas and who qualified for the credit.
As a result, a side benefit turned out to be that 3.7 million kids nationwide were lifted out of poverty, something studies have shown has lifelong positive impacts, including improvements in health and educational outcomes and higher earnings in adulthood.
The legislation Grassley and Ernst and their fellow Republican senators voted to block - in a near party line vote - would have expanded eligibility for the child tax credit for the lowest income families and adjusted the credits for inflation for the 2024 and 2025 filing years.
Nonpartisan experts projected the bill would have lifted an additional nearly half million kids out of poverty, and made 3 million more significantly less poor by moving their families closer up to the poverty line. In its first yer.
According to the non-partisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities - a Washington, DC based think tank - about 48,000 Iowa children under the age of 6 from low income families would have benefited from the expansion Grassley and Ernst voted against.
The bill was approved by the House in January on a bipartisan 357 - 70 vote. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR), noted that huge bi-partisan support for the bill in the House and quipped on the Senate floor, “On a normal day you can’t get 357 House members to agree to order a piece of apple pie. But that’s the kind of support this tax bill had.”
Sounds like a pretty easy “YES” vote, especially for two Senators who like to brag about how much they support families. That goes double when their vice presidential nominee, Senator JD Vance - who also bills himself as a big supporter of families - is currently embroiled in controversy over his attack on blended families after trying to redefine who is a Mother of children in a family and who isn’t. Only biological Moms and kids count by his measure.
Yet, despite all their talk about supporting families, Grassley and Ernst voted “NO.”
Vance didn’t even show up to vote at all.
Grassley and Ernst voted to leave those nearly half a million kids who would have been lifted out of poverty behind, still living in poverty. More groceries would have been helpful for growing kids, but Grassley and Ernst are, apparently, willing to “overlook” that fact to advance their cause of partisanship.
Some Senate Republicans claimed the bill was too costly. Yet, nonpartisan budget experts say it would have virtually no impact on the budget. Costs of the enhanced tax credit were sufficiently offset by bipartisan negotiators so there would be no significant budget impact.
Some Republicans, however, let the truth slip.
They didn’t want to give Joe Biden and the Democrats a win this close to the election.
Plus, if things go the way Republicans hope they will in November, and they win the House, Senate and White House - an increasingly unrealistic prospect as the corruption, anti-democratic plans, and plain weirdness of the Republican presidential ticket comes into better focus - they think they can get a “better bill” if they wiat until they don’t have to compromise with Democrats.
That’s not the way things are supposed to work in a democracy, but there’s a more immediate question: Exactly what do they mean by a “better bill?” Wyden answered that question: “Even more handouts to big corporations and the wealthy.”
Grassley complained that Democrats didn’t work with Republicans on the bill - which is nonsense.
First you don’t get a 357-70 vote in the House when one party writes legislation in a partisan vaccuum.
Second, it ignores the fact that the Senate version of the House bill was carefully negotiated by the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Ron Wyden (D-OR) and the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Jason Smith (R-MO). The two chairmen lead the tax writing committees of the US Senate and House, respectively.
Third, Senate Republicans walked away from bipartisan negotiation months ago. Now Grassley wants to complain they weren’t part of the talks that produced the bill. As the old saying goes, “eighty percent of success is showing up.” Senate Republicans had a seat at the table, but didn’t show up. Their House Republican counterparts did, though.
Grassley acknowledges there were parts of the bill he liked. All the big business tax breaks that were in it.
He dismisses the expansion of the child tax credit - that already proved itself by effectively lifting millions of low income kids out of poverty - as “welfare,” and complains there is no work requirement to get it.
There is also no “work requirement” for big corporations to claim the new tax breaks the bill contained for them, but Grassley is apparently “willing” to overlook that, too.
And exactly how does a tax break for big corporations differ from a tax break for low income working families on the “welfare” score? Senator Grassley doesn’t say.
Iowa families deserve so much better than they are getting from Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst in the Senate.
Both are delivering pure partisanship these days, rather than an agenda that works for Iowans - especially those 48,000 Iowa kids they are willing to leave behind, and the needs of the low income Iowa families their Senate votes ignored last week.
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The economic deck is stacked against the average Iowan and American. Our children don't have the same opportunity that we had and even less than our parents. Many of my friends and classmates who grew up on the South Side of Des Moines with me have not enjoyed the success that I have or they probably hoped for. All of the Firestone Tire builders and good industrial jobs have faded in Des Moines. John Deere is moving jobs to Mexico - again.
My children are doing ok if you ignore the huge student loan debt they are dragging along and the ridiculous health insurance costs they face. A little break with a child tax credit would go a long way in helping our grandchildren. We can help but there are many who don't have the help.
My daughter tells me of the various elementary students who approach her wearing the same clothes each day and saying they didn't have anything to eat the night before. She teaches in a rural Texas "Middle Class" district. You will probably find a similar situation in most school districts around the United States. I would not be surprised to see the demographics of formal industrial towns like Ottumwa, Cedar Rapids, and othrs showing the same thing.
An American middle class is rapidly evaporating - if it still exists. The sad thing is that supporters of Grassley, Ernst, and their fellow lizards can't see that. We can only hope that Kamala and the Democratic Party can win in Novemeber to chip away at that.
Thank you for your clear-eyed focus on our senators, Barry. Their cruelty to Iowa’s children is sickening, and I think their modeling rubs off on the state legislature’s Republican led decision making. As you point out, Iowans deserve so much better.