{SCHAKOWSKY: REPUBLICANS DELAY CHILD TAX CREDIT CHECKS TO 6.5 MILLION WORKING FAMILIES

It's July 25, the day that millions of child tax credit checks are starting to be mailed to families across the country.

President Bush went to Philadelphia yesterday to highlight those checks, to claim credit for getting some extra money into the pockets of working parents. Not surprisingly, the President didn't talk much about the children and working families who are struggling to make ends meet in the Bush economy but who were left out of the Bush tax cuts.

Maria Narvaez's child tax credit check is not in the mail. It's not in the mail because President Bush refused to intervene on behalf of 12 million children of poor working families. Earlier this week, 40 of my Democratic women colleagues and I wrote to the President to urge him to get personally involved but our pleas, like those 12 million children, were ignored. We could have fixed this problem easily - for $3.5 billion. But the House Republicans refused, holding these children hostage in an attempt to get $82 billion more in tax breaks.

Let's be clear about what happened here. Maria Narvaez's family and 6.5 million families across the country were excluded from the President's original child tax credit proposal. Then, at the insistence of the Senate, they were included. Then, in backroom negotiations with the Vice President, they were once again excluded in order to make room for more tax cuts for the wealthy. Maria and her three beautiful children were left out because she only earns $20,000 a year.

There was no room for her family because, according to Majority Leader DeLay and others, she doesn't make enough. Under their value system, 12 million children - including 1.6 million Latino children - aren't a priority. These children live in families that face payroll taxes, increasing sales taxes, car registration fees, higher health care costs, and household bills -- but we could not find room for them in the tax bill or time for them on the floor this week.

Of course, there was plenty of room for dividend tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires - like Vice President Cheney and Secretary Snow. According to the National Council of La Raza, "these tax cuts not only impose grave financial risks on the federal government and threaten future funding of key domestic priorities, but will mostly benefit wealthy Americans leaving out a majority of Latino households." Thirty percent of eligible Latino households were left out of the child tax credit. Only 7 percent of Latino households own stock.

Maria works full time in a day care center taking care of other people's children. But who is taking care of her and her children? Maria and millions of hard working fathers and mothers are being denied a few hundred dollars in child tax credits because the President could not be bothered to push the House Republicans to accept the fair and fiscally responsible Senate bill.

Shame on them.