While there have been no shortage of policy proposals in recent years that are supposed to make life easier for families, and even encourage family formation and child bearing, there is little consensus about what exactly will accomplish these aims. But a compromise recently reached by a House Republican and a Senate Democrat could make a real difference. The editors of the Washington Examiner write:
The deal modestly expands the child tax credit while not going so far as Democrats did in Biden’s first year, when they transformed the credit into a large monthly child allowance. The deal indexes the credit for inflation [and] increases the amount available as a cash payment to low-income families, but preserves work requirements.
The worst thing about the . . . fix is that it is temporary. The changes expire in 2025. Temporary tax breaks are almost always bad policy, and short-term moves are particularly inapt when it comes to family policy.
Raising children is a long-term project. Marriage is supposed to be a lifelong commitment. Raising children is at least an eighteen-year commitment (but really, it’s a lifelong thing). Millennials are extraordinarily risk-averse, and that’s a reason they aren’t having children. This is all exacerbated by laws that create a future in which the tax code might or might not count children as people.
Read more at Washington Examiner
More about: Congress, Family policy, U.S. Politics