I protest.

DeLay takes a piss on the working poor.

Tom at TBOGG (links are bloggered, see the "Trickle down shamelessness" entry) points us at a New York Times article about Tom DeLay's refusal to consider a bill to extend the increase in the child tax credit for families making from $10,500 to $26,625. This is the increased tax credit that the Republicans denied to that group in the just-passed tax-cut bill.

Mr. DeLay's position puts him at odds with a growing number of Senate Republicans who have signed on to a measure that would extend the $400-per-child increase in the credit to many families making from $10,500 to $26,625. The Senate had approved the increase for those families last month, but it was removed in final negotiations with the House. Six Senate Republicans now support the measure, along with most Democrats.

According to DeLay,

"There are a lot of other things that are more important than that," Mr. DeLay said in a news conference today. "To me, it's a little difficult to give tax relief to people that don't pay income tax."

Mr. DeLay may not know it (although he damned well should), but all of the families in that income range do, indeed, pay taxes, and could well use an extra $400. As Tom at TBOGG says,

With that extra $400 those $110,000+ families could maybe, I don't know, fill up the Hummer H2 for a week. $400 to those people making $10,500 to $26,625 a year is a windfall and every penny of it would be pumped back into the economy.

Tom hopes that when DeLay dies, the poor will line up to piss on his grave. I quite agree. DeLay gives a whole new depth to the term "ugly American."