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Senate extends child tax creditHouse wants broader bill
From Ted Barrett
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Responding to complaints that millions of low-income families lost out on a key part of the tax cut package enacted last month, the Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill Thursday to give those families an additional $400-per-child tax credit. The vote was 94-2. However, swift approval of the measure in the House appears unlikely. That's because House Republican leaders want to tie that Senate bill -- which carries a $10 billion price tag, fully paid for by an extension of customs fees -- to a much more expensive House proposal that's not likely to win Senate support, House Republican leadership aides said. The conflicting bills will have to be reconciled in House and Senate negotiations before being sent to President Bush for his approval. Democrats seized on the omission of low-income families from the recently enacted hike in the child tax credit to paint Republicans as favoring wealthy Americans over working families. They pointed to a liberal advocacy group study that found a million children of active-duty military families and military veterans would not get the tax relief. "We are determined to make this issue too hot for the Republicans to handle," House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi warned. "They are just going to have to come through and they are going to have to do it soon." Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, said Republicans did not "intend" to exclude the lower-income families but were forced to by constraints on the size of the original tax bill. "I think that because we had that $350 billion cap, something happened in the conference that caused some of the people who were intended to be covered by the child tax credit for refundability were not. I don't think anyone intended for that to be the case and now I think we need to come in and correct that," she said. Initially, House Republican leaders resisted making a fix to the first tax bill passed last month. "You understand these people don't pay taxes," a GOP aide explained. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, chief sponsor of the Senate measure along with Democrat Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, took great exception to this sentiment, which was expressed by a number of her Republican colleagues. "They do pay taxes," she said. "They pay payroll taxes that are an enormous burden." Both the proposed House bill and the Senate bill increase the child tax credit for families earning between $10,500 and $26,625 a year. Both also allow higher income married couples to claim a larger credit than what was allowed in the previous bill. The main difference between the two bills is the House bill would make permanent the otherwise temporary changes to the child tax credit OK'd last month. Senators urged their colleagues in the House to pass a similar bill in the next week so that millions of low-income families could also benefit from a rebate check this August. Only Sens. Don Nickles and James Inhofe, both Oklahoma Republicans, voted against the bill.
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