Peter Ferrara:

The authors propose winning the support of the working class the old-fashioned way: buying it, with taxpayer money, of course. They endorse a proposal by Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review to raise the current $1,000 child tax credit to $5,000 per child. That credit could be taken up to the full amount of each parent’s income tax and payroll tax liability. . . .

In other words, the money belongs to the very taxpayers who would be getting it. They would be paying a smaller tax bill. They would be receiving a tax cut. Now, there are people who have spoken of every tax cut since Reagan’s as a subsidy to taxpayers, on the assumption that the money belongs to the government. We do not call those people conservatives.

Ferrara writes as though tax credits for children were some nefarious liberal invention. They were introduced to our tax code by the Contract with America, for solid conservative reasons that he does not begin to engage.