Michael R. Strain, Columnist

Biden’s Child Tax Credit Has a Fatal Flaw

Sending households monthly checks could transform a poverty-fighting measure into a middle-class boondoggle.

April 6, 2021 at 11:00 AM UTC

Michael R. Strain is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of “The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It).”

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Joe Biden hasn’t been in the White House for three months, so it’s way too soon to justify the claim that he has already joined the ranks of transformational presidents. But one Biden initiative that really could be game-changing is his plan to give U.S. households a monthly check based on the number of children they have.

Progressives celebrate the program as an antidote to child poverty. Conservatives fret that it will give low-income parents the opportunity to avoid work.