LETTER TO THE HOLLAND SENTINEL: Holland, MI — As April 15, Tax Day, approaches, we are more acutely aware than usual of our nation’s tax code. Often unnoticed is our nation’s largest anti-poverty program for working families, the earned income tax credit (EITC), a refundable tax credit geared primarily toward families with children. Equally important is the child tax credit (CTC), which provides up to $1,000 for each child under age 17.
Ronald Reagan called the EITC “the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress.” The EITC helps bridge the gap between low-wage earnings and the costs of meeting basic needs for over 22 million households. It lifts almost 7 million Americans — including 3.3 million children — above the poverty line.
Ronald Reagan called the EITC “the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress.” The EITC helps bridge the gap between low-wage earnings and the costs of meeting basic needs for over 22 million households. It lifts almost 7 million Americans — including 3.3 million children — above the poverty line.
More than 700,000 families in Michigan have benefited from the EITC in recent years. Expansions made in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) last year enabled an additional 228,000 Michigan families to obtain the EITC. The ARRA also lowered the income threshold for the child tax credit, thereby assisting an additional 499,000 children in Michigan. If Congress fails to extend the ARRA provisions this year, all of the above Michigan residents would lose that benefit.
Many of us in the Holland-Zeeland area are involved in efforts to feed people, to insure they have food on the table and in the cupboard. We fill food closets and Thanksgiving baskets at church and at social service agencies. We raise funds for the CROP Walk. We give a dollar or a can of food at the grocery check-out. We work at Angel Food or Feeding America distribution sites. But we also need to work toward federal laws that improve the financial stability of families, policies and programs that will reduce poverty and, therefore, hunger.
Bread for the World, a national anti-hunger and anti-poverty advocacy organization, urges you to write your senators and members of Congress now. In fact, our own Sen. Debbie Stabenow, as a member of both the Senate budget and finance committees, sits in a strategic position in these tax discussions . Please let her, as well as Senator Levin and your representative in the House, know that In the midst of the debate in Congress over which taxes to change, which to reduce, and which to raise, the needs of low-income people must not be lost.
Nancy Miller
Resident of Holland and a member of the local chapter of Bread for the World
Many of us in the Holland-Zeeland area are involved in efforts to feed people, to insure they have food on the table and in the cupboard. We fill food closets and Thanksgiving baskets at church and at social service agencies. We raise funds for the CROP Walk. We give a dollar or a can of food at the grocery check-out. We work at Angel Food or Feeding America distribution sites. But we also need to work toward federal laws that improve the financial stability of families, policies and programs that will reduce poverty and, therefore, hunger.
Bread for the World, a national anti-hunger and anti-poverty advocacy organization, urges you to write your senators and members of Congress now. In fact, our own Sen. Debbie Stabenow, as a member of both the Senate budget and finance committees, sits in a strategic position in these tax discussions . Please let her, as well as Senator Levin and your representative in the House, know that In the midst of the debate in Congress over which taxes to change, which to reduce, and which to raise, the needs of low-income people must not be lost.
Nancy Miller
Resident of Holland and a member of the local chapter of Bread for the World
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