New Election Results, New Challenges for the Economic Security of Women and Families

The results are in, and the National Women's Law Center is ready to go. We anticipate new challenges. But some things never change: our willingness to collaborate with new and old partners and champions in Congress, our commitment to women’s priorities, and our passion for promoting the economic security of women and their families.

One of our key priorities for the next two months will be making sure that hard-working women and families get the support they need from fair, equitable tax policies. Both the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) are critical to the economic security of women and their families, and we are working to ensure that Congress will vote to permanently extend recent expansions of the credits before they expire at the end of the year. We are also endeavoring to make sure that the Bush income tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans expire as scheduled next month.

Unfortunately, the plan Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) proposed this fall is on the wrong side of all of these issues – it eliminates these critical improvements and expansions to the CTC and the EITC that help hardworking parents, while extending tax cuts for millionaires. NWLC analysis finds that under Sen. McConnell’s plan:

• 12.9 million taxpayers would lose $8.4 billion from the Child Tax Credit;
• 11.7 million taxpayers would lose $3.2 billion from the EITC and
• Over 30 percent of single mothers would get nothing. 

That’s not acceptable.