GOP: A revealing split on child tax credits

For a brief moment last week, bipartisanship was alive and well on Capitol Hill, said Rex Huppke in USA Today. A clear majority of House Republicans took a break from “yelling angrily into Fox News TV cameras” to join with Democrats and pass a $79 billion tax bill that would expand the federal child tax credit, a “wildly effective” antipoverty tool. The bill would incrementally raise the maximum refundable tax break to $2,000 per child in 2025 from $1,600 today, and adjust it for inflation. Less generous than the pandemic-era credit of up to $3,600, which temporarily drove child poverty to an all-time low, it would still lift an estimated 400,000 children out of hardship. But the GOP’s “momentary foray into doing something helpful” was soon derailed by Senate conservatives, who vowed to block the bill. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) gave the game away, saying he opposed the expansion because it would make President Biden “look good” and could get him re-elected.

Senate Republicans recognize this bill for what it is, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial: “stealth welfare expansion.” Rep. Jason Smith, the lead GOP negotiator, did manage to include the renewal of some 2017 Republican tax breaks as part of the deal. But such small gains aren’t worth trading for “larger child-credit checks,” which will discourage parents in part-time work from seeking full-time employment. Worse is a provision that would let parents use the previous year’s income to meet the credit’s $2,500-a-year earnings requirement, “even if they don’t work at all the next year.” That “will inevitably drive some parents out of the labor force.” That’s not “how real parents behave,” said the Washington Examiner. Moms and dads “who know they must work to put food on the table one year” won’t suddenly quit the next. What this legislation will do is reward “family formation” and entrepreneurship, key conservative goals.

The clash over this bill reveals a GOP in flux, said Ramesh Ponnuru in The Washington Post. Back in 2012, then-Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney stood up for “makers” and dismissed the 47 percent of the population that paid no federal income tax as government-dependent “takers.” But now that non-college-educated whites dominate the party’s base, lawmakers have to heed workingclass concerns. Some GOP senators, though, are still 47-percenters, rejecting all benefits as “welfare.” In 2024, that’s callous and politically foolish. Passing this modest bill would help the party, help Americans, and “help to bury a bad idea.”