Bush pressuring House GOP to act quickly on child tax credits

WASHINGTON -- The White House leaned on reluctant Republican leaders in the House on Monday to act quickly on a Senate-passed bill to make millions of low-income families eligible for the $400-per-child tax rebates already in the works for middle-income parents.

"His advice to the House Republicans is to pass it, to send it to him so he can sign it," said President Bush's spokesman Ari Fleischer. "He understands they're going to take a look at some other tax matters. That's their prerogative. But he wants to make certain that this does not get slowed down, bogged down."

The House's Republican leaders have not decided how to respond to the new urgency to pass the bill and end the uproar over the child tax credit. John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said a decision could be made early this week.

'Never say never'

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said last week the House plans to pass two or three more tax bills this year but did not answer Democrats' demands that the House vote on the Senate's bill. "You never say never," he said.

Top Democrats in the House and Senate wrote Bush to ask that he press the House harder. "Asking millions of working families, who need the child tax credits to help make ends meet in this stagnant economy, to sacrifice in order to pay for additional tax breaks for the wealthy is not right," wrote Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

House Republican leaders have been reluctant to embrace tax benefits for families that pay little to no income taxes. They have said they might combine the Senate's narrow bill with tax reductions they favor, such as making the just-increased tax credit a permanent benefit. The credit will drop back to $700 in 2006 if left unchanged.

The White House, in agreement with the House's Republican leadership that tax cuts should be aimed at those who pay income taxes, said the tax program can nevertheless give low-income workers an economic helping hand.

"The president thinks that for people who are struggling to make it from lower-income into lower middle-income and into middle-income, this is a helpful way to help them to work up the economic ladder," Fleischer said.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, had said the checks to lower-income families could go out later this summer with the refunds for middle-income families if the House passed the legislation by June 23.

The Treasury Department said Monday it could not send both batches of checks together without delaying them all significantly. If the child tax credit bill is passed, those checks will be mailed in September.