The Child Tax Credit Won’t Save Western Civilization

DailyCaller: Sen. Marco Rubio threatened on Thursday to vote against the final tax reform bill hashed out by the House and Senate in conference.

The Florida Republican insisted he would vote against any legislation that doesn’t contain the child tax credit that he and Utah Sen. Mike Lee drafted. On Friday, Republicans caved into Rubio’s demands and included his cause in their tax reform package.

It’s pretty clear why Rubio made a fuss about this one issue.

Voices from the Right and the Left have criticized Republicans for failing to include the Rubio-Lee child tax credit expansion in a tax reform package. The most prominent voice in skewering Republicans for this dereliction is New York Times conservative columnist Ross Douthat.

In a widely-shared Twitter rant two weeks ago, Douthat attacked populist conservatives who backed Trump to stem western civilization’s decline, yet seem to evince no concern for the child tax credit.

“THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT THIS. It isn’t a video of a Muslim doing something bad or a Hollywood sex scandal or a stupid left-wing academic saying something stupid. It’s just a pro-natalist policy in the midst of a baby bust and who would care about THAT?,” readone of the NYT columnist’s many tweets on the subject.

According to Douthat, the lack of attention paid to the issue by Breitbart and Fox News proves that these populist-nationalists are frauds who don’t really care about reversing demographic suicide.

The columnist admitted that the child tax credit is not gonna save the West — it’s just one small thing to encourage a pro-natalist agenda.

Furthermore, Douthat argued it was not a handout and the credit was molded to be the sole benefit of hard-working Americans.

“The proposed tax credit is linked to having a job. It’s specifically designed to satisfy conservative concerns about subsidizing dependency, welfare mothers, illegal immigrants, etc. Lots and lots of its beneficiaries live in Trump country,” he claimed in his Twitter rant.

However, that one claim isn’t really true. According to Temple University Law Professor Jan Ting, the child tax credit would likely do more to benefit illegal immigrants that middle-class Americans.

“When House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady introduced the bill, Section 1103, Refundable Credit Program Integrity’, provided that the refundable credits were not available unless the ‘taxpayer includes the taxpayer’s Social Security number on the return of tax for such taxable year,’” Ting wrote for the Center of Immigration Studies. “This would ensure that illegal aliens could not receive the credit.”

But that language was changed to allow illegal aliens to reap the rewards.

“However, when the bill was marked up in committee, this language was replaced with ‘No credit shall be allowed under this section to a taxpayer with respect to any qualifying child unless the taxpayer includes the name and Social Security number of such qualifying child on the return of tax for the taxable year,’” Ting explained. “Because of birthright citizenship, any children born to illegal aliens become automatic U.S. citizens. Thus, illegal aliens can still receive billions of dollars in tax credits for their U.S.-born children.”  read more