In 2021, Sen. Joe Manchin didn’t just block an expanded child and anti-poverty tax credits that had lifted millions out of poverty. A new study shows it also resulted in a massive regressive tax increase on the working class.
Sen. Joe Manchin talks to reporters on Capitol Hill on March 22, 2023. (Jabin Botsford / the Washington Post via Getty Images)
Despite representing one of America’s poorest states, West Virginia senator Joe Manchin (D) decided in 2021 to kill legislation to extend expanded child and anti-poverty tax credits that were helping the working class.
The expiration of the expanded tax credits resulted in more than three million kids being thrown into poverty. New data shows it also resulted in a massive regressive tax increase on the working class.
The numbers from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy are stark: the Manchin Tax Increase resulted in single moms with two kids who were making $25,000 a year being hit with a 12.5 percent tax increase, and married couples with two kids who were making the same amount being hit with a nearly 9 percent tax increase.
Courtesy of Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
While Manchin was killing the expanded tax credits, the yacht-owning, coal-baron senator was also fighting to preserve government subsidies for fossil fuel companies raking in huge profits.
And yet while championing that corporate largesse, Manchin insisted he was worried that “our economy, or basically our society, [is] moving towards an entitlement mentality.” He suggested that continuing the expanded child tax credit in President Joe Biden’s proposed Build Back Better legislation would incentivize people to remain unemployed and encourage lazy parents to buy drugs.
Those claims ended up being lies, according to academic studies published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The most recent of those reports found no negative “effects of the expanded benefit, and temporary removal of the work requirement, on labor force participation and total hours worked.”
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