How to Expand the Child Tax Credit

The tax credit for children has long had wide bipartisan support, reflecting its popularity with the public. There are multiple reasons for having some such government policy. We have long sought to exempt the basic cost of living from the income tax, and that cost rises with the number of children in a household. Our entitlement programs do not account for their financial dependence on parental investments in children. Many Americans also worry about our below-replacement birth rates, and average family sizes are lower than surveys consistently find that American women want.

When he was president, Donald Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which doubled the child tax credit to $2,000 per eligible child. His running mate, Senator J. D. Vance (R., Ohio), has spoken of making it $5,000. Kamala Harris proposes a credit of $6,000 for newborns, $3,600 for children aged one to six, and $3,000 for children older than that. Our friends at the Wall Street Journal are not wrong to detect a “bidding war” in this campaign — or to see some dangers in it, both to the federal budget and to households’ incentives to work.