Angie Craig: “We went from a $5,000 to a $10,000 tax credit for a normal adoption. But most importantly, we focused our efforts this…”

“We went from a $5,000 to a $10,000 tax credit for a normal adoption. But most importantly, we focused our efforts this year on children of special needs... we went from a $6,000 to a $12,000 tax credit, and we phased it in more rapidly than we did the normal adoption. But what is important here is the character of the adoptions. For children with special needs, oftentimes their costs up to adoption are less than normal children because the Government fronts a lot of that cost. To parents adopting children of special needs, it comes after the adoption. We tried to characterize this provision a little differently. And we will do that in the coming year. No, we did not get all we wanted. But for any Senator to say it is not good to double the adoption credit on children with special needs, and to phase it in faster than we are doing for the children of normal adoptions, somehow is really not understanding what we are accomplishing.”