What the next president could do for families

In the final weeks of a presidential campaign, countless ideas are regularly thrown back and forth like the proverbial spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks. And the various commitments and promises from Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump would all rely on a Congress friendly to their prescriptions. But under the hood of a crazy election cycle, the tectonic plates are shifting.

Than that New York Times' Claire Cain Miller recently reported that the Trump campaign has largely supported ideas such as a larger Child Tax Credit (CTC), child care assistance and paid leave for new parents. Although the details are a bit fuzzy, she wrote, the support for her alone is “part of a shift in the Republican Party in recent years and perhaps in the role of government in American family life.”

This change is real. It is difficult, if not impossible, to look at the Republican Party of a decade or more ago and not see how the GOP is actively undergoing a slow but meaningful evolution in a family-friendly direction.

But political specifics are very important. And the difference between what the Trump-Vance campaign says about family policy and where Harris-Walz would put her energy highlights real disagreements about what real family-friendly efforts might mean.

The Harris campaign wants to revive the pandemic-era CTC, which gave monthly checks to all parents regardless of whether they worked or not. Even among working-class parents, this approach failed to achieve overwhelming popularity, and universal payments stopped after six months. Her campaign also announced plans to increase the CTC to $6,000 in the first year of a child's life, expand funding for pre-kindergarten, and use federal funds to cap a family's child care costs at seven percent of their household income.

Again, this would only happen in the unlikely event of unified Democratic Party control of Congress (and perhaps not even then). And they are essentially the same measures that were pushed under the banner of “Build Back Better” during the presidential election. Biden’s administration fell into disarray.

Trump's plans are a little more unclear. In a statement on JustCampaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said the former president supports plans to expand the child tax credit to reduce child care costs, which have risen 32 percent since Kamala Harris took office [as VP]and continue to support expansions of family leave.”

If Republicans control Congress, it will take some alchemy to figure out what that might look like in practice. In 2017, then-President Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which consolidated or eliminated some aspects of the tax code while doubling the size of the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000. If Congress does not act next year, the CTC will revert to the previous amount, effectively increasing taxes on millions of parents.

It remains to be seen whether the Trump campaign will take action to increase the CTC beyond its current maximum of $2,000, or whether he will simply settle for making that level permanent (as the current platform states ). Vice presidential candidate Senator JD Vance has a record of supporting a larger CTC with more generous support for low- to moderate-income households, clearly stating in the debate that “we need to spend more money.” ” on childcare, but these have yet to be translated into explicit campaign proposals.

Assuming that Congress is interested in improving the way the CTC provides economic support to parents, a number of social conservative authors and scholars, including myself and Brad Wilcox of the IFS, have signed a letter calling for the Offer legislators some opportunities for improvement. In the letter, we propose that Congress increase the total value of the CTC to $3,000; increase the ability of credit to support working-class households by increasing repayment capacity; reduce or eliminate marriage penalties, for example by eliminating head of household status; Curbing fraud by requiring a tax identification number for parents applying for the loan; and introduce a $2,000 upfront bonus for new parents.

These options are not presented as described, but they provide some food for thought about the creditworthiness that Congress should consider. In particular, a “baby bonus” would be a critically important way to provide economic support to new parents when they need it most – such as around the birth of their child – rather than incorporating the support into the tax return structure, which they may not receive until the following year April.

What is noteworthy is that this letter was signed by a cross-section of pro-life and/or family-friendly leaders. And more broadly, there are other signs that conservative attitudes toward supporting families continue to shift. Look no further than a current one First things Contributed by Rachel Bovard, vice president of programs at the Conservative Partnership Institute, a think tank that has blended the energy of the Tea Party with the rise of the Make America Great Again (“MAGA”) movement.

Bovard, a former firebrand Senate staffer and longtime voice of conservative populism, leaves the policy details to fill in. But their message is broadly on point: Conservatives must respond to universalist programs from the left, not with a prescription for blanket tax cuts and corporate loans, but with policies that empower parents financially and give them the opportunity to balance work-life balances. Finding the balance that best suits your lifestyle.

Family-friendly conservatives who have grown weary of the left's leading proactive policy offerings might like to imagine a future Vice President Vance leading congressional negotiations and prioritizing allocating resources for a larger CTC and a more pluralistic and supportive child care framework. Or perhaps Republicans in Congress will have to contend with a Democratic administration that largely adopts the policies of the current president in the White House.

With just over a week until Election Day, the future of family policy in the U.S. remains very uncertain — but there is clear potential for a better future.

Patrick T. Brown (@PTBwrites) is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he writes the weekly “Family matters”Newsletter.