A child care room is seen during an open house at Genesis in south Oak Cliff on March 29 in Dallas.
Chitose Suzuki/Staff Photographer
Quality child care
On the way home from church on Easter, I saw signs for gas for $3.99 per gallon. Will this be the week I start paying over $4 per gallon? The $12 billion our president wasted in the first two weeks of his unlawful and so far unsuccessful invasion of Iran could have paid for a year of child care for 900,000 children.
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Quality child care helps children grow up to be responsible citizens, which would probably make us safer than anything Donald Trump has ever done.
Refundable child tax credits
Imagine working hard every day, yet watching wealthier neighbors receive a child tax credit three times as large as yours simply because they earn more. For millions of Dallas families, this is not hypothetical — it is current law.
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One in five eligible taxpayers misses out on critical tax credits each year, but the deeper crisis lies in Congress. Under today’s rules, a working family earning $25,000 receives just $3,375 in child tax credit support, while a family earning $400,000 receives $8,800. This is a system that rewards wealth over work.
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The solution is clear and bipartisan. Making the child tax credit fully refundable for low-wage working families would cost just $16 billion annually — a modest investment that in 2021 cut child poverty by nearly half. I urge readers to call Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz today. Demand that they fix the child tax credit phase-in formula and put working families first. Our children are worth that call.
Bukekile Dube, Dallas/Turtle Creek
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Texas can lead the way
As a North Texas resident, I recently read about the 110-degree March heat in Arizona with alarm and recognition. Climate scientists confirmed that extreme early-season heat like this would have been virtually impossible without decades of fossil fuel emissions. Here in Dallas, we know our summers are getting longer, hotter and harder on kids and seniors every year.
I am not writing to sound the alarm. I am writing because Texas is genuinely positioned to lead the way out of this. We already lead the nation in wind energy, our solar capacity is growing fast and our entrepreneurs and workers are ready to build a cleaner, more reliable grid.
What is holding us back is not resources or ingenuity. It is a permitting process that has not kept pace with the opportunity in front of us.
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Streamlining clean energy permitting with faster, clearer approvals for solar and wind would mean more investment, more jobs and a grid better prepared for extreme heat that is no longer a distant threat but a present reality.
Texas ID issues
It took me five months to get a Texas ID. The birth certificate my brother got for me was rejected by the Department of Public Safety because the seal of California was not embossed. I had to download a form, get it notarized and wait six weeks while it was processed.
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Texans born in Texas can request documents online, but those of us born elsewhere don’t have that luxury. Once I got an official birth certificate, I tried to get an appointment at the Plano DPS. The available dates were four months out!
So I joined the campers waiting in line for any open slots for the day. After three tries, I got an appointment but was denied an ID because 55 years ago, I took my husband’s name. I needed my marriage certificate, which I do not have.
It was easier to get a passport (takes more time and is expensive), but the government did not have a problem with the name mismatch.
The SAVE Act discriminates against married women and people who have lost their papers. It’s not wearisome rhetoric unless you believe it is OK to deny or delay U.S. citizens’ access to the ballot box.
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Not a fan of Talarico’s preaching
Re: “Republicans: Politics and Bible don’t mix — Talarico’s faith-heavy campaign criticized, but Democrats pushing back,” March 14 news story.
I look forward to candidate James Talarico’s sermons on the purported biblical truths supporting his positions on cultural issues such as late-term abortion, open borders and placing gender ideology above science regarding transgender rights.
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Maybe he can square his positions on these issues while at the same time defending his opposition to the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.
Do you think this Presbyterian seminarian will defend the holy words of Jesus Christ on the campaign stump, or just pick and choose to loosely interpret selected biblical passages to con the biblically illiterate into voting for him?
The holy Bible that I read does not support the positions espoused by Talarico as expressed in this news article. Frankly, I don’t need or want a candidate for the U.S. Senate to preach to me on biblical interpretation. That is what church is for.
John Riggs, Highland Park
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Agrees with editorial on gender care
Re: “AMA Chooses Science Over Gender Ideology — For too long, America’s medical associations ignored contrary evidence,” Feb. 23 editorial.
Thank you for this important and timely editorial. As a physician, I have found myself at odds with many in my profession — knowing that the science was simply not solidly behind gender-affirming care.
Patients with gender dysphoria deserve compassion. Expecting society to change federal and state registration forms, and the public to accept pronoun changes has always seemed unrealistic to me.
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Compassionate people — teachers, physicians, parents and even some politicians — have been placed in impossible situations because of the insistence of a tiny (1%) of our society that has pushed for trans ideology to become mainstream.
So, again, thank you, The Dallas Morning News, for publishing this important new position of both the American Medical Association and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
Ellen Taylor Seldin, Dallas