The Patriot Post® · The Politics of the Child Tax Credit

During a presidential election year, candidates on both sides trip over themselves trying to appeal to the American electorate. This often entails making bold promises about what your country can do for you, which John F. Kennedy advised against. This time, it’s regarding the child tax credit.

With the current credit sitting at $2,000 per child under 17, Kamala Harris is calling for a $6,000 credit, a transparent attempt to appeal to middle America and traditional families. Keep in mind, though, that the Democrats are the party of abortion. One million abortions a year isn’t enough for them. Moreover, they despise the idea of the traditional American family, working to undermine it with all manner of cultural devolution.

Yet now we’re supposed to believe they care about helping parents with the financial burden of raising a child?

University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds writes, “Even as they cheered news that a Planned Parenthood mobile van would park right outside their national convention to choke off pregnancies with free abortions and vasectomies, nominee Kamala Harris announced a half-baked proposal to encourage childbearing via tax credits for new parents.”

Setting aside the hypocrisy, there are other problems with the proposal. Paying people to have children leads to more out-of-wedlock births. Often, that puts money in the pockets of single mothers while leaving men free of responsibility. Children, meanwhile, are left vulnerable as they grow up without the support of a father.

“The CTC is a costly transfer program for taxpayers with kids who do not need government handouts and who do not meaningfully change their fertility decisions in response to larger payments,” says the Cato Institute. “As an anti-poverty program, the CTC is poorly targeted, and without income requirements, regular no-strings-attached payments from Washington are counterproductive for the most vulnerable families.”

All this makes it odd that a Republican vice presidential candidate like JD Vance would jump on board the CTC. Vance is proposing a $5,000 credit.

“Mr. Vance is putting himself into a bidding war against Ms. Harris, using taxpayer money,” argues the Wall Street Journal editorial board. “Meantime, he is cornering his patron and GOP running mate, Donald Trump, into $3 trillion of bad policy that could sink any chance of extending Mr. Trump’s successful 2017 tax reform.”

It’s yet another sign that Kamala Harris’s media-driven ascendancy this election campaign has unsettled Trump and Vance, both of whom should boldly propose sensible solutions for families instead of trying to beat Harris at her own game.

 According to the American Enterprise Institute, “In Washington, DC, for example, due to the many benefits provided at low earnings and fewer benefits and higher taxes paid by those who work and earn more, a hypothetical single mother of two children had the same total income whether she earned $11,000 or $65,000 through work. A $5,000 per child CTC on top of existing benefits would further encourage benefit collection over work.”

It’s not a complete surprise that Vance is on board with the child tax credit idea. After all, it was the Republicans who first proposed it in the 1990s. And since many Republicans supported taxpayer-funded childcare during COVID, they feel pressured to continue supporting government solutions to our growing demographic and fertility crisis.

But taxpayer-funded financial incentives have been tried everywhere, and they simply don’t work.

“Hungary,” notes Glenn Reynolds, “offered forgivable loans to new parents and Poland announced substantial annual subsidies to promote childbirth, but without noticeable effect. South Korea has had the same experience. China has been frantically, and futilely, trying to undo the catastrophic results of its ‘one child’ policy. France first enacted birth incentives in 1939, but without much luck — birth rates have fallen pretty steadily since.”

Yet, if Trump wins the election and Republicans keep control of the House, some approaches might address some of the core problems with the Democrats’ plan used by the Biden administration as a subversive way to introduce a universal basic income.

“Democratic proposals would allow households to claim the credit without having to work. They should to that extent be resisted,” explain National Review’s editors. “Capping the credit at a household’s total tax liability (including both direct and indirect payroll taxes) would protect work incentives. And the credit should be expanded alongside budget and tax reforms that reduce future deficits.”

There are other ways to help parents with children, such as implementing direct tax cuts across the board for working families and taking steps to lower inflation. If families could afford food and clothing, and if both parents weren’t forced to hold down one or more jobs, they wouldn’t need the state to step in.

While it sounds family-friendly, no child tax credit could possibly cover the exorbitant costs of raising a child in this economy. Republicans want to be the party of the American family, but they’ve done barely more than the Democrats in creating supportive economic conditions.

Sadly, Republicans have left the door open for Democrats to seize an issue that shouldn’t be an issue at all. In spite of that, if Republicans win this November, it should be followed by real action to create a thriving economy — an economy in which couples can afford to have children and raise them without government assistance.