"A presidential debt commission will release its proposals in December to balance the budget. A draft is already out there with a few big ticket ideas: Slowly raising the retirement age, making $3 in spending cuts for every dollar in higher revenue and a flatter income tax structure (and one that generates more revenue). But there are also little proposals, almost meaningless, such as ending the payments to states and tribes for abandoned mines.

One idea that’s floating around is to eliminate the Earned Income Tax Credit. This would have terrible consequences for the working poor – especially people who live in Native American communities. The Earned Income Tax Credit is one of the most successful anti-poverty programs ever. It’s a tax credit that puts real money back into the pockets of families who are supporting themselves on modest incomes.

A report from the Brookings Institution looking at three decades of the tax credit and puts it this way: “The EITC has proved remarkably successful in reducing poverty. In 2003, the EITC lifted 4.4 million people in low-income, working families out of poverty, more than one-half of them children. Today, the EITC lifts more children out of poverty than any other social program or category of programs. Without it, the poverty rate among children would be 25 percent higher.”

The tax credit has been singularly successful on American Indian reservations and in Alaska Native villages. For example: Pull up a map of where the tax credit is most used and you see Indian Country. In many Native communities more than 40 percent of the population now is eligible for this credit. Just peek at Montana’s map for an example. The areas where the EITC is most common are the state’s Indian reservations. Make no mistake about this, reducing or eliminating the Earned Income Tax Credit will have a disproportionate impact on Indian Country."

Get the Story:
Article of faith: Don’t make the poor balance the U.S. budget (Mark Trahant 11/15)

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