Expand the Child Tax Credit, but define success first
- Bipartisan bill proposes slashing earnings threshold for child tax credit to just $1.
- Supporters claim 3.5 million families get a boost, but critics warn of 'relief without results.'
- Government accountability remains a disaster: OMB has failed to track federal program efficacy for 15 years.
- Federal debt exceeds $40 trillion while Congress continues to throw cash at symptoms rather than root causes.
Brief Summary
Congress is once again tinkering with the child tax credit, proposing a new bill that would lower the earnings threshold to a single dollar. While proponents argue this puts extra cash in the pockets of working families to cover essential bills, the proposal highlights a recurring legislative failure: the inability to distinguish between temporary relief and long-term financial independence. Past experiments, like those during the pandemic, showed that while government checks can suppress poverty statistics in the short term, they rarely foster lasting economic mobility.
Despite decades of warnings—including from the likes of Daniel Patrick Moynihan—Congress remains incapable of effectively auditing its own poverty-reduction programs. A decade and a half after being ordered to inventory federal spending, the Office of Management and Budget has left the books in shambles, leaving taxpayers with no real way to know if these programs actually work or if they are just expensive band-aids on deep structural wounds.
Why This Matters
This matters because your tax dollars are being shuffled around in a system that lacks basic metrics for success. When the government expands these credits without clear goals, you are effectively funding a perpetual cycle of dependency rather than investment in real economic growth. With the national debt ballooning past $40 trillion, this isn't just about charity; it's about whether the federal government has any coherent strategy for handling the economy or if it is simply printing money to mask systemic failures in housing, education, and employment. You are footing the bill for a program that even the government admits it cannot properly evaluate.