The state Legislature’s chief budget writer is defending a decision by lawmakers to pass changes to a tax rebate law, which last year sent $3 billion back to taxpayers.

“We saw during the pandemic, when our low income workers — a lot of our low income workers, a lot of our front line workers — were out there working day in and day out, could not stay home and do remote work and had to go out there on the front lines,” state House Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz said on Sunday.

“They were the ones that helped carry this economy and keep our economy strong in those difficult times,” he continued.

The North End Democrat was speaking with WCVB’s Sharman Sacchetti and Ed Harding for their Sunday politics show On the Record. Those low-income workers who kept the state going through the COVID-19 pandemic are deserving of benefits when the economy they buoy does well enough, he said, and the state must send money back to taxpayers.

That’s what happened last summer, when lawmakers were seemingly taken by complete surprise by then Gov. Charlie Baker’s announcement a rarely invoked law from 1986 had been triggered and would require the state to repay taxpayers several billion dollars.

The invocation of Chapter 62F of the General Laws led lawmakers to drop a pared-down version of Baker’s plan to cut taxes. However, when lawmakers recently revitalized last year’s tax cut proposal, they also said the state should change the way 62F functions.

“When we have this tax rebate opportunity, when it may come again, if it ever comes again, we want to make sure that everyone prospers in it equally, and make sure everyone has an opportunity to benefit from those tax rebates,” Michlewitz said.

Included with the House’s plan to up the rental deduction, raise the senior circuit breaker and institute a permanent child tax credit, alongside new proposals to double the death tax threshold and slash short term capital gains, is a plan to untether any future rebates under 62F from a taxpayer’s income.

Last year people received back about 14% percent of what they’d paid in 2021. Under the House plan, any future rebates would be split evenly between all taxpayers.

“I think it really has a bigger impact for those that are maybe on the lower income spectrum, and those are the ones that we really relied on during our tough times,” the chairman explained.

Called An Act to improve the Commonwealth’s competitiveness, affordability, and equity, the State House passed their tax cut plan on April 13 by a vote of 150-3, with five representatives not voting.

The State Senate must consider the plan before it can be sent to Gov. Maura Healey, who did not offer any changes to the rebate law in her late-February tax cut proposal.