WASHINGTON- Today, Representative Mike Carey (OH-15) spoke at a House Ways & Means Committee hearing entitled “The Need to Make Permanent the Trump Tax Cuts for Working Families.”
At the hearing, Carey expounded on the crucial impact that the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act had on Ohio’s Fifteenth District. Carey also highlighted the urgent need to provide tax relief for family caregivers, which would be addressed in his Credit for Caring Act.
Full video of Congressman Carey’s remarks can be found here, and a full transcript can be found below.
CAREY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, it is an honor to serve on this committee again and I also want to welcome our new members to the committee on both sides of the aisle. So welcome. This body delivered landmark legislation in 2017 that provided, as we’ve heard from all of you witnesses, most of you witnesses, provided significant tax relief for Americans by putting money back into their pockets and for working families and boosting our economy. We must make these effective tax cuts permanent; I think we have heard that from many of you today and build upon the success of the tax cuts and jobs act to benefit working families and our businesses. This would ensure that that Americans don’t see an increase in their taxes and on average save Ohioans about 23 percent tax hike. You know, last Congress, this committee and the House overwhelmingly passed the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act, which included many, many of the policies to help working families. We need to continue to support these policies and help our working families grow.
As a member of the Working Families Tax Team, I have heard firsthand from members of my community over the last 8 months about how TCJA[’s] policies helped them and the importance of extending the tax cuts.
Credit for Caring. This is a piece of legislation that I am proud to lead with my fellow Ways and Means member Representative Linda Sanchez and it is called, the Credit for Caring Act, which would provide eligible working caregivers a tax credit to help offset the cost of the care they offer. It would allow them to continue to work while caring for a loved one through illness, disability and aging in place. I am looking forward to continuing to work on tax policies that will help these working families succeed.
Mrs. Marple, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to come out here and I was touched by your story number one. It sounds like you have a lot of things going on. There is no doubt about that, but I just you know, you were once a single mother and now you are remarried, and you have two children. Very similar to my mother and so I appreciate what you’re doing. In my home state of Ohio, a family making the median income in my district is about $75,000, and they would see a tax increase of about $1,540 if these taxes were set when they were set to expire. And 89,350 families in my district would see their Child Tax Credit benefit cut in half. I mean let’s just say that number again, 89,350 would see that child tax credit benefit cut in half. So, let me as you Mrs. Marple can you give me any idea how a tax increase like that would impact your family?
MARPLE: Yes, thank you for your question, Congressman and thank you for the opportunity to talk about families today. I think that, as I talked about in my testimony, that we are raising kids in a culture of giving up and as we do our taxes and we find out that the powerful communicator of the government that we’re doing a good job as parents when we find out that has been cut in half that would be for me it would mean that I would have received back less money or I would have owed money for my taxes. Which would have added to the financial burden, but it also would kind of take the wind out of our sales in doing the work that we’re doing to build the country and to fight against this culture of giving up. The tax credit remaining permanent and expanding would just encourage families like mine to not give up.
CAREY: I want to thank you for that testimony. I was going to have some other questions, but I am running short on time. But I just wanted to say is I represent the largest city in the state of Ohio, which is Columbus. A recent study by the National Association of Manufacturers found that Ohio could lose upwards of 208,000 jobs, 18.9 billion dollars in Wages, and over 37 billion dollars in GDP if we don’t extend TCJA. So, I just want to point those numbers out again 208,000 jobs, 18.9 billion dollars in wages, and over 37 billion dollars in GDP. And with that Mr. Chairman, I yield back.