Sunday, February 17, 2008
Another sweet deal for families
Christian Trejbal
Recent columns
- The aquatic center might sink
- The Black House won't restore itself
- When dogs attack goats, taxpayers pay
- Keeping e-mail private
From the RoundTable blog
Students at Virginia Tech and Radford University, young professionals lured to the New River Valley, gays and lesbians, and childless couples all should have a keen interest in the economic stimulus checks coming from Washington. Once again, the government is treating you like second-class citizens.
The stimulus package President Bush signed into law last week goes out of its way to subsidize families with kids at everyone else's expense.
It's like they can't help themselves. Congress skews everything toward married couples with children, especially when it comes to money.
Bush and Congress desperately want to look like they are doing something about the recession that seven years of feeble fiscal policy have wrought. They will toss $168 billion into the air and hope Americans go on an economy-boosting shopping spree.
Is there any problem this president doesn't think shopping can solve? Even after Sept. 11, 2001, travel and spending was the cure.
Of course with personal debt lingering at or about record levels, smart Americans will use their spring windfall to lower credit card balances. At least the banks will enjoy a cash infusion.
And good, wholesome, heterosexual families will be able to pay off the most debt.
Most Americans will receive a $600 check in the next few months thanks to the stimulus package. Most single Americans, that is.
Married couples who file joint tax returns will get twice as much, even if only one is a wage earner.
Such unjustified favoritism is common. More than 1,000 federal benefits and privileges are contingent on heterosexual marriage. Thanks to tax breaks, for example, married couples pay fewer taxes than singles with comparable incomes.
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Now they double-dip with larger rebates. If Congress had divvied up rebates equitably, rather than based on who has a ring on a finger, singles would receive bigger checks than they would now and some married couples would receive smaller ones. But every eligible taxpayer would receive a check for the same amount, something greater than $600 and probably less than $1,200.
That's just the start of the inequity.
People who earn a lot will not receive the checks. Singles who earn more than $87,000 will get nothing. For married couples, the income cap doubles to $174,000.
So one spouse could make a lot of money and the other little or nothing. If they had been filing separately, they would be entitled to $600, but the bias for wedlock gets them twice as much.
Then there are the kids. They're worth $300 each. The nuclear family of four suddenly has $1,800 to spend.
This is on top of the child tax credit parents enjoy when they file their taxes every year. There is plenty of money to encourage Americans to reproduce, it seems.
Wealthy parents win, too. Income caps on the rebates rise for each child. Couples with children can earn more and still get their handout.
The government even will pay for unborn children. Give birth before the end of the year, and $300 will show up as a tax credit in 2009.
Couples planning to have a kid in the near future might be tempted to hurry so that the delivery comes before Dec. 31. They have about six weeks left to pursue conception.
Stories abound of parents asking doctors to induce labor at the end of the year so they can reap the child tax credit. Now they'll have even more motivation. Woe to the anesthesiologists and obstetricians on call New Year's Eve.
It's not as if tax breaks and bonus rebates are needed to encourage marriage and reproduction. The former has been around in one form or another for millennia. The latter has been around a lot longer. Neither is going anywhere.
Yet America continues to discriminate against people who have not met The One, against those who choose to remain single, against gays and lesbians who may not marry in most of the country and certainly won't be recognized as married by the federal government, against those who do not have kids.
There is one consolation. The stimulus package will drive up the national debt, and those kids whose parents will receive $300 will be paying that off for decades.
Trejbal is an editorial writer for The Roanoke Times based in the New River Valley bureau in Christiansburg.
