The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed criticizing the idea yesterday. Robert Stein and I offer a defense.

We believe the [tax credit for children] should be bigger, should be applied against payroll taxes as well as income taxes, and should be available to all taxpayers (with no high-income phase-outs). We argue that Social Security and Medicare create a large implicit tax on child-rearing: Parents make the financial sacrifices necessary to raise the children who will fund those programs tomorrow, while also paying taxes to fund them today. The tax credits would offset this bias by recognizing that parents are, in effect, making two layers of contributions.
Entin’s counter-argument is hard to take seriously. He says that “most people have children because they want them, not because the state needs future taxpayers to fund social programs.” Thanks for clearing that up! But the point is irrelevant. He argues, further, that instead of expanding the child credit we should shrink the entitlements. Fine. At some point, we will have to rein in their growth at the very least. But it could take us a while to get there. And once we did, we would still be right to finance the slimmed-down programs in a way that avoids double-billing parents.