Dorothy A. Brown is a professor of law at Emory University and teaches several tax classes and a critical race theory seminar.  A nationally recognized scholar in the area of race, class, and tax policy, she has authored dozens of articles, including Race and Class Matters in Tax Policy, published in the Columbia Law Review.

For several months, we have been bracing for an attack on immigrant families who earn the Child Tax Credit. Over the past few days, Republican lawmakers have made clear that no matter is too urgent or too serious for them to resist going back to the anti-immigrant playbook to score political points.

In its deliberations to develop a plan to reduce the federal deficit by more than a trillion dollars over the next decade, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction considered a proposal to calculate cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) in all government programs using the Chained Consumer Price Index-Urban (C-CPI-U), rather than the Consumer Price Index (CPI-U).

A lot has been said about the proposed tax giveaway to the wealthiest Americans and the austerity measures recommended by President Obama's deficit commission. However, an analysis of the impact that both proposals would have on black and brown Americans has been missing from the conversation.

U.S. Census Bureau projections show that the nation is expected to become majority-minority by the year 2042. And, although Census figures indicate that people of color will comprise about 42 percent of the elderly population by 2050, they are likely to become a majority of older adults by the year 2070.