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Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker was in Sioux City last night and this morning. At an event at the Sioux City Public Museum last night, Booker unveiled his proposal to considerably expand the Earned Income Tax Credit that low-income people can receive.
Booker, in his first Sioux City campaign event of the 2020 election cycle, talked about the new policy he calls the Rise Credit. He said to boost "economic justice," expanding the EITC would result in more money going to the personal budgets of Americans, so they could move away from living paycheck to paycheck.
Booker also held an education roundtable this morning at Sergeant Bluff Luton High School.
The practice of Midwestern communities illegally raising levees has landed the Upper Mississippi on a list of the country’s most endangered rivers. According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, some 40 percent of the levees from north of St. Louis to central Iowa is higher than authorized by federal regulators.
Conservation group American Rivers has rated the Upper Mississippi as the third most endangered in the U.S. because of the practice. Here’s the organization’s Eileen Shader.
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"As one levee district raises its level…its levee heights, it forces other districts along the river to raise theirs.”
Researchers say levees obstruct natural flood cycles, depriving wildlife of habitat and causing more intense flooding downstream.