Copyright 2000 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
St.
Louis Post-Dispatch
December 3, 2000, Sunday, FIVE STAR LIFT
EDITION
SECTION: EDITORIAL, Pg. B3
LENGTH: 714 words
HEADLINE:
GRAB-BAG IMPASSE THREATENS WAITING CHILDREN
BODY:
One fine day in May of 1998, I was innocently surfing the Web when I
ran across a photograph of an unnamed 4-year-old girl who lived in an orphanage
somewhere in Eastern Europe.
Next thing I knew, it was September and my
wife and I were in western Siberia. It was the worst place I've ever been and
the most expensive vacation we ever took. Luckily the government helped pay for
it. I had a new favorite federal program. Our little girl was one of about
132,000 children adopted in America in 1998. About 42 percent of them were
adopted by relatives or step-parents. The rest, about 77,000, were unrelated
kids going into new families. Some 16,000 were kids from other countries.
Americans may disagree about a lot of things, but we agree that adoption
is a social good. To that end, government helps defray what can be extraordinary
costs in some adoptions, particularly international adoptions.
Missouri
and Illinois offer subsidies to families who adopt kids with special needs,
including many who come out of the foster care system. Both states offer
generous tax credits for special-needs adoptions.
And since 1996, the
federal government has offered a $ 5,000 tax credit to adoptive families with
adjusted gross incomes of $ 75,000 or less. The amount of the credit decreases
as income increases. In 1998, those credits totaled $ 101 million and helped
50,000 kids, the Treasury Department reports.
As a percentage of the
national budget, $ 101 million is minuscule. But that money literally has meant
the difference between life and death for many children.
So here's a
program that doesn't cost very much, enjoys broad national support and has a
huge impact on children's lives. Clearly it's an important national priority,
right?
Well, yes and no. The federal adoption tax credit was set up with
a five-year sunset date, meaning it will expire at the end of 2001. There is
wide agreement that it should be extended; the Hope for Children Act, sponsored
by Rep. Tom Bliley's, R-Va., gathered 280 co-sponsors. That bill would not only
extend the time limit but raise the tax credit to $ 10,000 and extend the
benefits to families with incomes of $ 150,000; the House approved it on Oct.
26.
But in the Senate, the adoption tax credit has run into trouble. The
Senate's Republican leadership tacked it onto a massive grab-bag called the
Taxpayers Relief Act, which they're planning to debate when the lame-duck
Congress goes back to work later this week.
Here's a partial list of
some of the other goodies incorporated in this one bill:
An increase in
tax-free school construction bonds; a $ 1 an hour increase in the minimum wage;
$ 27 billion in additional Medicare funding for hospitals, nursing homes and
HMOs over the next five years; tax benefits for certain IRA donations; increases
in the low-income housing tax credit; extension of Medicare
benefits for colon cancer screenings, pap tests and pelvic
exams; $ 500 million in research money for juvenile diabetes and so forth and so
on.
The idea in lumping all of these issues together is a "something for
everyone" approach. Because of procedural rules, the issues can't be separated.
So if the Democrats don't like the handouts for the HMOs and insurance
companies, and the Republicans don't like the minimum wage increase, each side
has to swallow hard. They don't call politics the art of compromise for nothing.
So it looked like the Taxpayers Relief Act was greased until shortly
before the election recess, when Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., succeeded in
attaching language to the bill that would prohibit the use of federally
controlled prescription drugs for use in physician-assisted suicide.
Oregon is the only state that has such a law, and that state's
Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden reacted in outrage. He's promised a filibuster when
the Senate convenes. Nickles says he's not going to back down.
So the
Senate can spend December doing a lot of good for a lot of people, including
lots of children who will die if people can't afford to adopt them, or it can
spend the holiday season debating physician-assisted suicide.
That issue
may deserve a full debate. But not now. Nickles needs to withdraw his
legislation. And the Senate ought to leave grab-bags for Santa Claus.
NOTES:
ADOPTION khorrigan@postnet.com
LOAD-DATE: December 3, 2000 
