States weigh cuts to earned income tax credit for working poor, By Pamela M. Prah, March 28, 2011, Stateline.org: “Rohnalda Hollon, a single mother of three in Beaverton, Michigan, and an Iraq war veteran, worries that state budget cutbacks will wipe out the refund she gets from a program aimed at helping the working poor. ‘The $400 from the Earned Income Tax Credit could mean the difference between paying my Consumer’s Energy bill or not,’ says Hollon, who works full-time for the Army National Guard Military Funeral Honors program, and has been put forward as one of the faces of an advocacy campaign called Save Michigan’s Earned Income Tax Credit. Hollan is typical of the recipients of the Michigan credit, which returns an average of $432 to families, most with children. Governor Rick Snyder wants to eliminate the program, along with a slew of other tax credits, in a bid to make the state tax system ‘simple, fair and efficient.’ Eliminating the credits also would help close the state’s $1.8 billion budget deficit. Just scrapping the Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC, would save the state at least $340 million a year…”
Day: March 28, 2011
Poverty and Services in Rural Areas – Colorado
Mobile services making rural poverty a little more bearable, By Barbara Cotter, March 26, 2011, Colorado Springs Gazette: “The elderly man shooting the breeze with folks at an Ellicott food and clothing pantry is reluctant to share his full name, but when it comes to discussing his financial situation, he’s an open book. ‘I’m poor, lady. I’m very poor,’ says the man, who will identify himself only as ‘Mr. Hughes.’ The 71-year-old former electrician lives with his wife and a caretaker and survives on about $910 a month in Social Security. He talks about having to choose between heat and food, how he sometimes has to go without gas in his car. Even paying for his oxygen can be a struggle. ‘And yeah, there’s times I don’t eat,’ he says in a gruff voice interrupted by rhythmic puffs from his oxygen tank. Poverty challenges people no matter where they live. But a hard life is made harder for Hughes and hundreds of other financially strapped people who live on the eastern plains of El Paso County, where unending stretches of two-lane and dirt roads connect one small town with few social services to other small towns with few social services…”