A4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, OCTOBER 25 , 2021
They’ve also managed to get
ahead on car repairs, a constant
worry when contending with the
area’s often-rough, potholed
roads.
Depending on how strict a
work requirement Manchin suc-
ceeds in imposing, and whether
it would apply to both parents,
the couple may be at risk of
losing access to the expanded
credit.
If Cris were to work, his in-
come would p robably put them
over the $60,000 threshold, even
though most, if not all, of the
extra money would go toward
paying for child care.
Right now, Cris cares for the
twin boys while M ali teaches.
When she did try to find licensed
child care in their rural area, she
was quoted a price of $1,300 per
month at a d ay care an hour
away.
“I don’t feel like there should
be a penalty for one parent
staying home,” Mali said. “It
would also feel like a penalty for
my husband being the one instill-
ing values in our children.”Upper-class poor
Jess Greenlief, 38, is the execu-
tive director of a family basic
needs pantry in Gilmer County, a
rural region in central West Vir-
ginia where the poverty rate is
25.5 percent.
With a 1-year-old son and an
11-year-old daughter, Greenlief
was both a recipient of the pay-
ments as well as a witness to
their impact on clients coming
through her pantry door.
“It takes close to an hour to get
anywhere important,” she said.
“A lot of the resources that typi-
call y are available elsewhere
don’t trickle down to us. Many of
our jobs are related to the gas
and oil industry, and a lot of
those jobs are on hold right now
or are out of state.”
Greenlief used her $
monthly payments for school
clothes and car repairs — a
necessity in an area with limited
public transportation options.
Often she works with families
that are fully employed, making
more than the proposed
$60,000 income cap but still
unable to meet their daily needs,
she said.
“What we see a lot of are
upper-class poor,” Greenlief said.
“These are individuals who make
too much money for program-
matic support, but they are still
struggling on the whole.”
Greenlief said that she often
sees families where one or both
parents are “working to survive”
— meaning rent, food and utili-
ties swallow up their salaries,
leaving little to spare. That’s
when they show up at Greenlief’s
pantry looking for basics such as
baby formula, laundry detergent
or personal hygiene products.
For this group, the expanded
payments have also been critical,
she said.
“The families that I’ve been
working with over the past sev-
eral years, they have not had to
come back to see me after the
CTC,” she said.
[email protected]
[email protected]Torbati reported from West Virginia.
Swenson reported from Washington.For that demographic, includ-
ing James and Ruth Jones, the
idea of rushing into the job
market seems like an insur-
mountable barrier. “It’s hard to
get a job at this age,” Ruth said.
Neither Ruth nor James feels
capable of returning full time to
the workforce. Ruth has multiple
sclerosis and receives about
$1,300 each month from Social
Security. Before retiring for
health reasons, she worked for a
Charleston hospital for 36 years.
James’s part-time work as a cook
earns him about $1,400 a m onth,
but he can’t work more because
he has to take care of his elderly
mother, who lives nearby.
The $500 monthly payments
have helped with household re-
pairs and senior pictures for
their grandson, the couple said.
In the past, to make sure theand say children should not be
cut off from resources because of
their parents’ circumstances.
“The opportunity to cut child
poverty in half in West Virginia is
one that we have to take and
imposing a work requirement
basically neutralizes that benefit
right out the gate,” said Seth
DiStefano, policy outreach direc-
tor at the West Virginia Center on
Budget and Policy, a n onpartisan
research organization. “Let’s be
clear: Parenting is working, rais-
ing kids is work.”‘It’s hard to get a job at this
age.’
Relative to other states, large
numbers of West Virginia grand-
parents are raising their grand-
children — a p artial legacy of the
opioid pandemic that tore
through Appalachia.you think, if we’re going to help
the children, that the people
should make some effort?”
Then on Oct. 17, Axios reported
that Manchin also wanted to
restrict the program to families
with incomes of about $60,
or less. If he prevails, it would
most likely mean the end of those
payments for James and Ruth.
“We want Manchin to take a
little bit more active role in
protecting us as far as West
Virginians,” James, 64, said from
his chair. “We’re not a bunch of
deadbeats. We work for a living
and we’re due.”
A spokeswoman for Manchin
did not respond to requests for
comment, including when asked
about what specific require-
ments the senator would like to
see in exchange for his support
for continuing the expanded pay-
ments.
In West Virginia, 170,000 chil-
dren became newly eligible un-
der the tax credit expansion,
which was included in Biden’s
$1.9 trillion stimulus package
passed in March. The changes to
the tax credit raised the maxi-
mum benefit from $2,000 to
$3,600 per child per year and
dramatically expanded the share
of poor families receiving the
credit. In July, the food insecurity
rate in West Virginia households
with children dropped from
11.6 percent to 8.4 percent, and in
September a survey found
86 percent of West Virginians felt
the payments had made a “huge
difference.”
In interviews, families across
the state said they used the
money for essentials and small
luxuries: new clothes for growing
middle-schoolers, firewood to
heat a home in the coming win-
ter, pumpkins and a cheery scare-
crow to mark the fall season, a
3-year-old’s class pictures. But
now, advocates for the poor cau-
tion that Manchin’s require-
me nts could have an impact on
thousands of households, from
parents grappling with expensive
child care, to families earning
over $60,000 but still struggling,
to grandparents who are raising
grandchildren but aren’t able to
reenter the workforce.
“It takes everything out of us
just to make sure these children
are fed and taken care of and
clothed,” said Ruth, 61. “We’ve
been taking care of the children
on our own dime.”
The future of the expanded
child tax credit remains unclear
as negotiations continue over the
White House’s package of far-
reaching social programs. Biden
has signaled that he will resist
attaching work requirements to
the program.
For the Joneses, the cloakroom
discussions and cable news de-
TAX CREDIT FROM A
I n W.Va.,
concern
over a loss
in b enefits
BY AMY B WANGHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi
(D-Calif.) said Democrats are on
the verge of an agreement on a
social spending bill and also plan
to vote on a separate $1.2 trillion
bipartisan infrastructure bill this
week.
“I think we’re pretty much
there now,” Pelosi said on CNN’s
“State of the Union” on Sunday,
when asked whether President
Biden would “have a deal in hand”
on his “ Build Back Better” agenda
before he travels to Europe later
this week. “We’re almost there. It’s
just the language of it.”
Pelosi estimated 90 percent of
the bill had been agreed upon and
written but didn’t specify a final
spending number. The social
spending bill — which has pro-
posed investments in child care,
home health care, paid family
leave and climate change mitiga-
tion — had started out as a
$3.5 trillio n package but faced
opposition from Sens. Joe Man-
chin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten
Sinema (D-Ariz.).
“It is less than was projected to
begin with, but it’s still bigger
than anything we’ve ever done in
terms of addressing the needs of
America’s working families,” Pelo-
si said.
The White House and other
party leaders have spent recent
weeks in intense negotiations
with the party’s holdouts about
how to scale back the bill enough
to win their support. Pelosi’s as-
surances Sunday came as Biden,
at home in Delaware this week-
end, was hosting Manchin and
Senate Majority Leader Charles E.
Schumer (D-N.Y.) to continue dis-
cussions on the spending pack-
age.
Little surfaced immediately
from the meeting, except for a
brief White House statement Sun-
day evening describing the break-
fast as “productive” and saying
discussions would continue.
Meanwhile, liberal Democrats
have maintained they will not
pass the bipartisan infrastructure
bill without a concurrent agree-
ment on the social spending bill.
But on “Fox News Sunday,” Rep.
Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a member
of the House Progressive Caucus,
said it was “likely” that both deals
could be passed this week before
Biden attends the COP26 U.N.
Climate Change Conference in
Glasgow, Scotland.
“The president looked us in the
eye, and he said, I need this before
I go represent the United States in
Glasgow,” Khanna said. “Many
members understand that. We’re
working very hard to get a deal. I
understand we’re close, and I’m
confident we’re going to get
there.”
Pelosi said the bipartisan infra-
structure plan must be passed by
Oct. 31, when an extension for
transportation funding programs
expires. That funding has already
expired once, which resulted in a
brief furlough of 3,700 Transpor-
tation Department employees.
Pelosi also avoided answering
whether she was frustrated by
Manchin’s and Sinema’s resis-
tance to the bill.
“I’m respectful of everybody’s
point of view,” she said Sunday.
In a t elevised town hall Thurs-
day, Biden said Sinema was “very
supportive” of his agenda but re-
fused to raise taxes on corpora-tions or w ealthy Americans, “and
so that’s where it sort of breaks
down.” Pelosi on Sunday said that
“we probably will have a wealth
tax” but that it would cover only
about 10 percent of what they
needed to pay for the bill. She
expressed confidence, however,
that the entire social spending bill
would be paid for, including
through IRS tax enforcement and
global taxes.
“We were ready to pay for $3.
[trillion],” she said. “So we can
certainly pay for [a bill that’s] half
of that.”Khanna, who had originally
backed Biden’s broader tax in-
crease for corporations and the
wealthy, on Sunday expressed
suppor t for a “billionaire’s tax” as
a means of paying for the bill.
“The billionaire’s tax is essen-
tially a wealth tax,” he said, noting
that such a tax was at the core of
Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.)
presidential campaign. He also
noted that a billionaire’s tax
would hit his Silicon Valley con-
stituency especially hard.
And while Khanna called Man-
chin, with whom he disagrees, “astraight shooter,” he had some
harsher words for Sinema, who
publicly has been more evasive
when it comes to her specific
objections to the social spending
bill.
“You know exactly where
[Manchin] stands. I disagree with
areas, but I respect that,” Khanna
told “Fox News Sunday” host
Chris Wallace. “My concern with
Sen. Sinema is... why doesn’t she
explain herself? If she’s shifted
her position on Trump tax cuts,
explain it. I guess I’ve never seen a
politician — including, frankly,the former president Trump —
who just totally ducks answering
questions of the media and con-
stituents, and that’s my frustr a-
tion with her. She’s not clear
about what she believes.”
In Pelosi’s wide-ranging inter-
view on CNN, the House speaker
also indicated that she was open
to using the reconciliation proc-
ess to avoid a Senate filibuster in
raising the debt ceiling and that
she would support pulling back
the filibuster to pass a voting
rights bill.
“The most important vote right
now in the Congress of the United
States is the vote to respect the
sanctity of the vote, the funda-
mental basis of our democracy,”
Pelosi said. “If there were one vote
that [pulling back] the filibuster
could enable to go forward, that
would be the vote.”
Pelosi also said she thought the
Justice Department should pros-
ecute those who defy subpoenas
from the House select committee
investigating the Jan. 6 insurrec-
tion. The House voted to hold
former Trump aide Stephen K.
Bannon in criminal contempt last
week for refusing to comply with
the committee’s requests.
“It’s important for us to find the
truth about what happened on
Jan. 6, an assault on our Constitu-
tion, our Congress and our Capi-
tol,” she said.
Pelosi declined to answer
whether she would run for reelec-
tion.
“I would have to have that
conversation with my family first,
if you don’t mind,” she said.
[email protected]Greg Jaf fe contributed to this report.Democrats ‘pretty much there’ for deal on social spending bill, Pelosi says
JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks at a news conference on Capitol Hill on Thursday. She
said Sunday that Democrats are close to sending President Biden dual infrastructure bills this week.children had what they needed,
Ruth had to forgo buying medi-
cine to treat her MS, she said.
Despite her ailments, Ruth’s
days start at 6 a .m., with the
neighborhood outside her win-
dow still wrapped in darkness.
One recent October morning, she
coaxed her granddaughter Ay-
ricah awake and packed snacks
while the local news played on
television. With a black marker
she wrote, “Have a great d ay,” on
the clear plastic bag before re-
minding the girl to take a mask
for school.
Before leaving, Ayricah silent-
ly showed Ruth one of her graded
assignments.
“100 percent? Very good!”
Ruth replied. “Share some of
those smarts with your granny.”A penalty for stay-home
parents
Mali Gank and her husband,
Cris, who live in a small town in
West Virginia’s rural northeast,
have gotten by on her teacher’s
salary for the past three years,
ever since Cris, 47, was laid off
from his manufacturing job.
They have a 3-year-old son and
infant twins, born in February.
Mali, 43, has learned to budget
“to the penny,” creating spread-
sheets that lay out an entire year
of expenses. The first credit hit-
ting their bank account this sum-
mer felt like “relief,” she said.
They used the money to stock-
pile truckloads of firewood —
enough to feed the family’s wood-
burning stove through the win-
ter. The temperature inside the
home can get to 90 degrees or
higher when the fire is going, but
it’s the most economical way the
family has found to keep warm in
a state where electricity prices
can fluctuate wildly in the win-
ter.bates playing out on television
only seem to spotlight the gulf
between their family and policy-
makers.
“The struggle is real,” James
said. “These are not just num-
bers, these are people.”‘Parenting is work’
As the payments hit bank ac-
counts in July, the benefit
reached an estimated 60 million
children in 39 million house-
holds across the country.
A team of researchers from
Columbia University determined
that the first round lifted 3 m il-
lion children out of poverty and
that if all eligible children had
access to the payments, child
poverty would be reduced by
40 percent.
The Center on Budget and
Policy Priorities estimates that in
West Virginia, 93 percent of chil-
dren would ben efit from a per-
manent expansion of the credit.
“For some of our clients, this is
keeping them above water right
now,” said Beth Zarate, president
and chief executive of Catholic
Charities West Virginia. “West
Virginia just has so many chal-
lenges. We struggle with jobs, we
struggle with our people leaving
our state for other jobs. So the
child tax credit has been huge.”
But even as the program’s
benefits were registering in West
Virginia, Manchin expressed
concern over what he saw as an
overly lax social program avail-
able to too many. Fortifying Man-
chin’s criticism was a recent
study from the University of
Chicago finding that roughly
1.5 million workers would quit
the labor market under the Biden
plan.
Proponents of the plan coun-
ter that an expanded CTC offers a
unique chance to combat povertyLEXI BROWNING FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTDUNCAN SLADE FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTTOP: James and Ruth J ones pose with g randchildren Nilique
Jones, 17, a nd Ayricah Clark, 10, whom they are raising, n ear their
home in Charleston, W.Va., on Thursday. ABOVE: Cris Gank
uncovers the wood pile on his family’s front porch in Terra Alta,
W.Va. The family used money from the expanded child tax credit to
stockpile firewood to keep their home warm through the winter.