(PresidentialWire.com)- Last week, Mitt Romney, the nominal Republican senator from Utah, unveiled a plan to give households $4,200 a year for each child as a “Republican” answer to President Biden’s demand for more financial support to families with children.
Romney’s plan offers monthly cash payments of $350 for each child under the age of six and $250 a month for each child age 6 to 18. Families would even be eligible to receive the $350 a month payment four months before a pending child’s due date. In other words, parents expecting a new baby will receive $1,400 before the baby is even born.
Romney’s welfare scheme is calling for even more money than Joe Biden’s welfare scheme. But it should be noted that Romney’s plan would also simultaneously eliminate several existing welfare programs, meaning Democrats are unlikely to get on board.
Democrats want more welfare; they don’t want to replace several welfare programs with one welfare program.
At this point, it isn’t clear if any other Republican Senators will back Romney’s plan and the Utah senator hasn’t said whether he’s discussed his proposal with any of his colleagues or the White House.
But it is getting early support from “moderate” and progressive think-tanks. Which, when you get down to brass tacks, are the very people Mitt Romney is desperate to please.
Under the current law, the child tax credit provides $2,000 a year for children up to 16 and is paid out yearly. Those making less than $2,500 a year do not qualify for the child tax credit.
The existing welfare programs Romney’s plan would scrap are Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the Child and Dependent Care Credit, and the SALT deduction. Democrats are most irked by ending the SALT deduction because it hurts the wealthy in high tax areas – a major constituency of the modern Democrat Party.
In touting the plan last Thursday, Romney claimed it would lift nearly three million children out of poverty without adding to the deficit.
But who in his right mind would believe that?
Mitt Romney is the architect of what became Obamacare. It isn’t as if he has a winning track record when it comes to gauging what will and will not add to the deficit.
