Political Quotes

“I want to say to the senior Senator from Oregon, as the ranking member of the committee, he will remember, as I do, that in the course of that so-called markup, which is a fancy Washington word for having some debates and offering amendments, there was no hearing--no hearing for days, and there has still been no hearing on the Senate bill passed out of the Finance Committee and the new version of the bill that we will see right now. So, in the course of that discussion, there were no hearings. It would have been helpful to us and to the American people if we had the major organizations come in before the Finance Committee and give us testimony about the impact on children--organizations that have spent decades advocating on behalf of children, doing public policy research as it relates to children, but we never heard that because there were no hearings, not a single hearing on the bill. There was discussion, and there were questions for some tax policy experts, but nothing in the way of hearings that could probe very deeply on what happens to kids. I think the American people would like to know more about what will happen with the child tax credit, for example. There has been a lot of talk on the Republican side about the child tax credit; they are allegedly making it better. Well, the Senate Republican plan does increase the maximum tax credit for children from $1,000 to $2,000 per child. That sounds pretty good so far, right--$1,000 to $2,000.…”