Domestic Weekly Update July 27, 2010
New and Urgent in This Week’s Update
Latest from Washington, DCOrganizational UpdatesContact Congressional Offices to Confirm Tax Credit Actions (July Action)Thank you for all that you have done to put the low-income tax agenda front and center for Congress. Your work is well worth the effort. Right now, broader tax policy is getting more and more attention as Congress gets ready to go on its August recess (see Tax Policy section below). This is why your work is so critical. The outcome of tax legislation is unknown at this point. We know that Congress will do something this year to deal with the expiring Bush tax cuts; the question is what exactly will they do? Ensuring that low-income tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC) are part of the agenda will depend greatly on how we and our allies keep pushing our members of Congress (MoCs) to act. Over the last month, we have been pushing the following goals as part of our Economic Opportunity campaign: HOUSE GOAL: At least ten confirmed direct conversations between representatives and House Ways and Means Chairman Sander Levin (D-MI-12) and/or Ranking Member Dave Camp (R-MI-4) and at least twenty letters sent to Reps. Levin and Camp or staff to staff contacts between your MoC’s tax staff and House Ways and Means Committee staff. SENATE GOAL: At least six confirmed direct conversations between senators and Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and/or Ranking Members Charles Grassley (R-IA) and at last fifteen letters sent to Sens. Baucus and Grassley or staff to staff contacts between your MoC’s tax staff and Senate Finance Committee staff. You all have done a great job in requesting congressional offices to take these specific actions. Now it is time to see if they followed through. As noted last week, it is unlikely the House or Senate will take up tax legislation before the August recess. This gives us more time to push MoCs to make those contacts with tax writing committee members. But it also gives those who oppose extending these provisions time to weigh in as well. You can bet members of Congress will hear from many different people when they are back home in their districts. Let’s make sure that our chorus of voices is loud and effective. TAKE ACTION: Take the July Action. Contact your House and Senate offices and see if they have spoken or written to key committee members about making the 2009 improvements to the EITC and CTC permanent. If they have yet to do so, politely push their tax aides until you get confirmation that your representative or senator has weighed in his or her support with House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sander Levin (D-MI-4) and/or Ranking Member Dave Camp (R-MI-12) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA). Stress the importance of these tax credits for low-income working families. You can call Congress toll free at (800) 826-3688. Here are tools to help you in your conversations:
Over the next several weeks, you will want to be in contact with congressional offices about these requests. To compliment these important conversations, our August action will also help you generate media attention about these issues while representatives and senators are back home. See next week’s update for more details. For a compete synopsis of our 2010 campaigns, please see our updated U.S. Poverty Campaigns Summary page. We again thank Bread for the World for allowing us to use their toll free number. Recess Is No Time to Play: Get a Meeting with Your Members of Congress in AugustThis is the last week the House is scheduled to be in session. On Monday, August 2, House members will leave for the summer recess and will not return until after Labor Day. The Senate will follow suit on August 16. Both chambers are scheduled to return on September 13. This recess is a great opportunity to meet with legislators. This is an election year so they should be looking for chances to connect with constituents. Use this time to meet with them to talk about our priorities. Call the local scheduler today and ask for a time to meet — be creative! You can meet at their office, at a local coffee shop, or a community event. And don’t forget to sign up for their e-mail lists on their websites to find out when they will be holding town hall meetings and other events in your area. TAKE ACTION: Use our Activist Milestone on face-to-face lobby meetings to guide you and find a sample letter to send to your scheduler. Also, see our June 2010 Laser Talk to see how a conversation with a scheduler might go. Finally, learn the tricks for getting picked for a question at a town hall or candidate event. Don’t forget to use the Vote Kids congressional scorecard listing how all members of the 111th Congress voted on bills affecting children. Use this as a resource to prepare for your meetings and town halls. Keep the Summer Heat on the White House and Congress to Pass Child Nutrition ReauthorizationWith the August congressional recess fast approaching, the child nutrition coalition has turned up the heat to pressure the White House to make the reauthorization bill a top priority. Advocates are rallying behind the House’s bipartisan Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act of 2010, H.R.5504, which passed out of the House Education and Labor Committee earlier this month. The Senate passed S.3307, the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010 back in March, which makes similar improvements child nutrition programs as the House bill. The main difference is that the Senate bill only allocates half of the new funding for these programs as the House bill ($4.5 billion v. $8 billion). Data presented last week to congressional staff by the Carsey Instiitute of the University of New Hampshire really hammers home the need to Congress to act. According to the statistics, regional and racial differences can affect a child’s well-being. For example, one in three Southern children under the age of six is growing up poor and 54 percent of young black children are growing up poor. Providing adequate and nutritious food to these and other children is a key component in helping them grow up healthy. And it will take a robust child nutrition reauthorization bill to make it happen. Also, faith-based organizations are signing on to letter to Joshua DuBois, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, asking for presidential leadership on child nutrition reauthorization. You can read a copy of the letter from our What’s New in Faith in Faith in Action page. If you are connected to a faith community, please urge them to quickly sign on to the letter. You can use our new Outreach Action Sheet to brief others in your churches and communities about what is at stake. The deadline for sign-ons is this Thursday July 29. To sign on, please email Robert Francis at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America at Robert.Francis@elca.org. TAKE ACTION: Keep the press on. Urge your representatives and senators to pressure leadership to bring the child nutrition bills to floor votes before the August recess. You can use FRAC’s toll-free number (866) 277-7617 for your calls. When calling you can say: “My name is ____________ and I am a constituent from ________________ and also a RESULTS volunteer. I believe that no child should ever have to struggle to get food to eat. A strong reauthorization of child nutrition programs will help millions of American children get access to healthy, nutritious food all year round. Please urge Representative/Senator _____________ to support a strong child nutrition bill that allocates no less than $8 billion in new funding. Also, please urge him/her to tell House/Senate leadership to bring this bill to a vote before the August recess. Thank you for your time.” Use our lobby leave behind letters as guides for your calls. If you cannot call, contact their offices using our online action. To Be or Not to Be? Extending Tax Cuts for the WealthyThe debate is heating up over what will happen to the Bush tax cuts, specifically those cuts for the wealthy. To recap, in 2001 and 2003, Congress enacted a broad series of tax cuts. While most Americans did get some kind of tax cut as a result, the vast majority of benefits went to the wealthy. According to Citizens for Tax Justice, the Bush tax cuts have cost $2.1 trillion over the last ten years, with 52.5 percent of the benefits going to the top five percent income earners. Proponents of these cuts argued that cutting taxes for the wealthy would unleash economic investment and innovation leading to prosperity for everyone. That has not been the case. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has shown that between 2002 and 2007 (the last economic expansion), the top 1 percent received two-thirds of the income gains. In fact, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data shows that between 1979 and 2007, after tax income for the top 1 percent income earners increased by 281 percent; for the bottom 20 percent, it increased a mere 16 percent. This kind of data clearly shows that the “trickle-down” theory of economics, i.e. that economic benefits will flow down from the wealthiest to the poorest, is more theory than economics. Despite the data, many members of Congress are now demanding that all the Bush tax cuts be extended. The debate boils down to two positions. Most Democrats and President Obama want to extend the Bush tax cuts for individuals making less than $200,000 per year ($250,000 per couple). This would include about 98 percent of Americans. They would then let the tax cuts for the top 2 percent expire on schedule at the end of this year (an increase in marginal tax rates of 4.6 percent). On the other side are members of Congress who want all the tax cuts extended, even those for the wealthy. This position is supported by the vast majority of Republicans and some key Democrats like Sens. Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Evan Bayh (D-IN). In a new paper, CBPP states that if the tax cuts for top 2 percent are extended, it would cost about $1 trillion over the first ten years. Senators like Jon Kyl (R-AZ) have no problem with this. He recently said that tax cuts should never be paid for. But inevitably, as the deficit grows as a result, he and others will demand cuts to programs that benefit lower income earners, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other essential services, to balance the budget. We are already seeing this rhetoric play out with the president’s Fiscal Responsibility Commission. In the coming months, this debate is going to get louder and louder. Proponents of extending all the tax cuts want to make this an all-or-nothing proposition — either all the Bush tax cuts get extended or none do. They are doing this because they know that if extending tax cuts for low and middle-income Americans becomes a separate issue from extending the cuts for wealthy Americans, they will no longer be able to use the middle-class as cover to enact cuts for the wealthy (as they did in 2001). Most Americans support a progressive tax system (your tax rate is based on your ability to pay). They don’t believe in punishing the rich but they do believe they should pay their fair share. Nor do all people with wealth believe that tax cuts that primarily benefit them are good policy. Just last week, United for a Fair Economy had prominent, wealthy Americans speak on behalf of a strong, robust estate tax. For RESULTS, it is important to know that our work on the EITC and CTC is taking place in this context. Members of Congress need to understand that comparing tax provisions that help the poor and middle class to tax provisions that help the wealthy is comparing apples to oranges. The vast discrepancy in benefits is more than enough to justify treating them differently. In your meetings, be sure to mention that extending the 2009 EITC and CTC improvements must be a part of the bill to extend “middle-class” tax benefits. Without this distinction, Congress is more likely to lump everything together and risk enacting more bad tax policy or nothing at all. Note: While RESULTS takes no formal position on extending the tax cuts for the middle class since they do not directly affect those living in poverty, we mention them in our messaging simply because a middle-class tax bill will likely be the vehicle to extend the low-income tax credit provisions. Quick NewsSenate Subcommittee to Set FY2011 Head Start and Child Care Funding Today. The Senate “Labor-HHS” subcommittee (part of the Senate Appropriations Committee) has a mark up of its FY 2011 appropriations bill scheduled today, which includes Head Start and child care assistance. Unfortunately, pressure to reduce spending threatens cuts that will only hurt low-income children and working parents. Call your representative’s and senators’ offices and them that child care and Head Start are essential programs for children and families. Urge that the senator/representative support at least an $800 million increase in appropriations for CCDBG and a $989 million increase in funding for Head Start and Early Head Start, and to voice their support to Senate Labor Subcommittee Chairman Tom Harkin and Ranking Member Thad Cochran and House Labor HHS Subcommittee Chairman David Obey and Ranking Member Todd Tiahrt. If you are not sure who your representatives are, you can search by zip code on the RESULTS elected officials page. If you are unable to call, use our Head Start and child care online alert to take action. Happy 45th Birthday to Medicare! On July 30, 1965, President Johnson signed Medicare into law at the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, MO. Since that time, millions of seniors have benefitted from Medicare, which is a single-payer public health program. It currently serves over 30 million Americans. Healthcare NOW is using this anniversary event to not only celebrate this historic and successful achievement, but to urge that Medicare be expanded to include all Americans. RESULTS also supports a national health program like Medicare for All. Our own Ginnie Vogts of the Columbus, OH RESULTS group will be participating at a Medicare birthday rally at a local community health center on Friday. Learn more about what you can do at the Healthcare NOW website and find an event near you. Letter Sent to Senate in Support of a Responsible Estate Tax. Yesterday, Americans for a Fair Estate Tax sent a letter to the Senate endorsed by seventy organizations, including RESULTS, in support of the S.3533, Responsible Estate Tax Act (RETA). RETA is a compromise bill to reinstate the estate tax at a fair and reasonable level. Urge your members of Congress to support RETA by taking our online action. AnnouncementsPlease Complete the RESULTS Conference Survey. Please take a few minutes to complete our Online Survey about the 2010 RESULTS conference. If you were at the conference and attended any lobby meetings, please fill out our new Online Lobby Report Form. You can also find helpful resources from the conference on our International Conference page. Vote for Grassroots Board Positions. We have three persons running for the open seat on the RESULTS/RESULTS Educational Fund Board. All current RESULTS volunteers are eligible to vote. Cast your vote by using our online voting ballot on the RESULTS website. The voting period will end on September 1. Don’t Forget to Take the Tax Credit Quiz! Be sure to challenge your knowledge of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC) and help brush yourself up on the important details at the same time. Take the Low-Income Tax Credit Quiz today to see how well we’ve done on preparing you for this key time in Congress. New Outreach Action Sheet Available. Use our August 2010 Outreach Action Sheet to urge your members of Congress to pass a strong child nutrition reauthorization bill. Upcoming Events(Click to see a complete calendar) July 30: Medicare’s 45th birthday. August 2–September 10: House on summer recess. August 14: RESULTS Domestic National Conference Call, 12:30 pm ET. August 16–September 10: Senate on summer recess. September 1: End of voting period for open RESULTS grassroots Board member position. September 6: Labor Day holiday. All RESULTS offices closed. RESULTS Contact InformationMain Office: (p) (202) 783-7100, (f) (202) 783-2818, 750 First Street NE, Suite 1040, Washington DC 20002. If mailing a donation to our DC office, please address the envelope to the attention of Cynthia Stancil. Domestic Legislative and Grassroots Support Staff: Meredith Dodson, (202) 783-7100, x116 (dodson@results.org); Jos Linn, (515) 288-3622 (jlinn@results.org). Note: Jos will be on vacation July 19–25, and Meredith will be on vacation July 22–August 2. We apologize for any delay in returning calls and e-mails. The RESULTS Domestic Update is sent out every Tuesday over e-mail to RESULTS volunteers and allies all over the country. The purpose of these updates is to inform and activate RESULTS activists to take action on our domestic campaigns. |