Verdugos News

WASHINGTON, D.C. — During the House Ways and Means Committee markup of the Republican tax plan, Rep. Judy Chu (CA-28) spoke out against the package and its focus on cutting taxes for the wealthy and well-connected while providing almost nothing to the neediest Americans. An analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy determined that should this package become law, Americans at the bottom 20 percent of income levels would receive an average tax cut of $40 next year, but the richest one percent would receive an average $16,550 tax cut.

Her remarks about the entire package can be viewed here.

In an exchange with Thomas Barthold, Chief of Staff for the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation, Rep. Chu asked about the proposed agriculture excise tax on foreign citizens from so-called “countries of concern”, including China, Cuba, and Venezuela. Mr. Barthold confirmed that individual citizens from a country of concern who are otherwise lawfully in the United States would have to face this tax because of the actions of their governments, even though they may be here because they are fleeing those regimes.

Her remarks later about that excise tax can be viewed here.

On the entire package, Rep. Chu remarked:

“Just weeks ago, House Republicans held the global economy hostage by demanding draconian cuts to federal programs that seniors, Veterans, children, and families rely on. The justification for this hostage taking was that the federal government simply spends too much money, and the only way that Republicans would accept addressing this problem is by cutting spending on social programs…

“These are the priorities laid out in this bill, and they stand in stark contrast to the accomplishments of the Democratic Majority. When Democrats were in charge, we passed the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act, delivering historic benefits to families and creating a fairer tax system that is making our clean energy transition possible. We expanded the Child Tax Credit, which cut child poverty nearly in half. We tripled the EITC for 17 million workers. And, we delivered an historic increase to the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, which helped millions – including the poorest families – to afford child care.

“But just like the original GOP Tax Scam, this package does none of those things. Once again, corporations get their deductions, while the neediest Americans get nothing.”

On the agriculture excise tax on foreign citizens, Rep. Chu remarked:

“This serves as just the latest example in a historical pattern of Red scare tactics and shameful fearmongering and discrimination that harms Chinese and Asian American communities. Our communities are no stranger to racist alien land laws that discriminate against us. In the 19th century, certain Americans feared that a growing population of Chinese immigrants would steal American jobs, land, and resources. This xenophobia led to the ban on Chinese individuals owning land and property being included in multiple state constitutions, and eventually to the enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This federal law did not just prevent Chinese individuals from coming to the United States, but also forced Chinese Americans at home to carry papers with them at all times. Just a few decades later, during World War II, lawmakers shifted the target to Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans, who were also subjected to exclusionary alien land laws in different states, and faced mass incarceration due to alleged—and never proven—disloyalty.

“I want to be clear: there are legitimate national and economic security concerns that the United States faces with these specific foreign governments, and to ensure we are addressing those concerns, I do not oppose limits on foreign governments from making purchases of agricultural land. What I do staunchly object to is any legislation that creates enormous, disproportionate barriers for an individual to purchase or own land solely based on their country of origin, because history shows us that what starts with one supposedly innocuous restriction in the name of economic or national security can be just the start of the wholesale violation of our communities’ civil rights.

“This provision, and many other bills like it, seek to curtail the ownership of American farmland by individuals with Chinese citizenship, as part of a larger narrative rooted in fearmongering about the ‘CCP coming in to buy up our farms and control our food supply’ but we know that this is in fact not the case. I don’t dispute individual cases of foreign investment into our farmlands, but we have a body to address this already—and legislation like this is preemptively seeking to address a problem that has not been a widespread threat. And if the problem my colleagues have is that USDA does not have the data they want, then we can address the data problem specifically—not produce legislation that will continue leading to profiling of our communities in an attempt to safeguard against future potential threats.”

Issues: Small Business, Jobs and the Economy Immigration 

Original source can be found here.