July 31, 2003
Parents in Florida Fulfill Bush's Hopes With Refunds
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
ROOKSVILLE, Fla., July 30 — The refund checks have started arriving, and for many residents here, the $400-a-child tax credit, part of President Bush's latest effort to stimulate the economy, could not come at a better time.
Matt Ross, a father of two, said he intended to pay a few bills and, with school starting in a few weeks, buy new clothes for his children. Robert and Sharee McCutcheon, who also have two children, said their money would go for school supplies and Christmas presents. Roger Kintz, father of two girls, including an aspiring Olympic gymnast who is competing this week in Detroit, said his money would help pay for the trip.
Bridgett Bedwell, the mother of two boys, was thinking about her family dentist. "I'm fixing to have braces for my kids' teeth," she said. "That check really helps me out, especially when the braces are costing me $4,000."
Spend. Spend. Spend. This is precisely what President Bush and Republican lawmakers were hoping for in enacting tax cuts that included an increase to $1,000 from $600 in the tax credit for children. Against concerns about the rising federal deficit (now projected at a record $455 billion) or the cost of maintaining troops in Iraq (almost $1 billion a week), supporters of the tax cuts, which passed the House largely on a party-line vote, argued that a sluggish economy was best improved by Americans' keeping more of their money so they could spend it. On Friday, the Treasury Department began mailing out the first of more than 25 million checks, $400 for each child who was 16 or younger in 2002.
But here in Florida's Fifth Congressional District, where voters are registered as Republicans and Democrats in nearly equal numbers, the news is not entirely encouraging for the administration. Interviews with dozens of voting parents this week found that a fair number — as many as one in three — were planning to save the money.
"My son has his own piggy bank, which he's already put money into," said one Republican, Rebecca Shaffer, a single mother of a 5-year-old. "We're going to put that money away for his college education."
Lisa Rinehart, a mother of two who voted for Al Gore in 2000, said, "Anything I get back in taxes goes to savings."
Brooksville, a town of 7,700 about 60 miles north of Tampa, sits in a district known for political unpredictability. In the last three presidential elections, that district has supported the Republican, then supported the Democrat and then backed a Republican again.
Wherever they put their support, many voters here expressed deep appreciation for the child tax cut. Some, like Brint Fanizza, the owner of an import-export business and the father of a 10-year-old boy, described themselves as Bush supporters all the way, impressed enough with the president's leadership skills that they would vote for him again, with or without a child tax credit.
"The president is doing what he thinks is best for the economy and the people of this country," Mr. Fanizza said. "We need eight years of his kind of leadership." The $400, he added, will go for school supplies.
Others, less taken by Mr. Bush's job performance, questioned the timing of the tax cut, suggesting either that the money could have been used for other things — like "road improvements or construction projects," Ms. Rinehart said — or that the cut was a political tactic intended to gain support for the president's re-election.
"In a way, $400 is not an extraordinary amount of money," said Sara Rittenhouse, a nurse, who sat with her husband, Kevin, a firefighter, watching their 10-year-old son at a football practice. "But it seems to me it's the kind of money that makes a difference to the people who don't pay attention to the big political picture. I'm sure there are a lot better ways to spend the money. To me, it's like a bribe."
Penny Little, a waitress and mother of an 8-year-old boy, only wished "a bribe" would come her way. She and her husband, a golf course employee who has been laid off, earned only $14,500 last year, she said, making them one of about 6.5 million low-income families whose earnings were not high enough for them to pay taxes. As a result, they will receive no money back for their children.
Such families drew sympathy from some voters here, but not all.
"If you give it to them, then it becomes a handout, another welfare program," said Brian Adams, owner of a trucking company and father of three who is planning to spend his $1,200 on orthodontic work for them. "You can't give a rebate to someone who didn't give anything."
That is a painful outcome to Ms. Little, a registered Republican, who is planning to study cosmetology at a community college this fall.
"I don't think it's fair," she said, pointing out that clothes for her son cost no less than clothes bought by middle-income families. "It doesn't take into account people who are trying and can't keep up with everything. I don't say people who are getting the money don't deserve it. But why don't they also give it to people whose income is lower? We could use it more than they do." |
