I’ve written in defense of the current child tax credit, and I favor expanding it modestly. At the same time, I understand the conservative arguments against this.
- Calling something a “tax credit” is an offense to language if one can get “back” from the tax credit more than one paid or owed in taxes. It’s just a child allowance at that point.
- Our massive budget deficit is increasingly a problem because it is fueling inflation and as interest rates are climbing. A child allowance could discourage work and marriage and thus result in more children being raised by a single, unworking mother, which is the formula for intergenerational poverty.
Those are three worthy arguments that should be weighed against the benefits of an expanded child tax credit and that should inform the details of a policy.
There’s one argument against a large child tax credit, though, that has always grated on my nerves: Giving poor people money is just funding their vices.
On this score, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) reportedly opposed a CTC on the grounds that it would just finance parents’ drug habits.
It’s understandable. I think people are more fastidious with their money if they feel they worked for their money than if it was just given to them. I think poor people, lacking the family and community support that people need to be steered straight, are more likely to get caught up in self-harming activities such as gambling, drugs, and excessive drinking.
But I also think this mindset is too paternalistic. We have a duty to help the poor, and if we use the government to do this, our choices are simply to give them money or to have the government micromanage how they spend their money.
The latter option is worse from a conservative viewpoint, I believe. For instance, many Democrats, instead of just giving parents money, want to subsidize their day care. This is a boondoggle for labor unions that want to regulate and unionize child care centers, and it is social engineering that harms stay-at-home mothers and discourages marriage.
Finally, the evidence does not suggest that poor folks, when they get a few hundred a month in no-strings-attached extra cash, spend their money poorly.
A new study suggests that parents who benefitted from the recent large child allowance increased their grocery spending and visited doctors more — but did not visit liquor stores more.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
This echoes findings published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2022.
Again, there are reasons to worry about a large child allowance, but there’s no evidence to support the worry that this money all goes to vice.