The Wonk Room

National Review Gets It Right

Our guest bloggers are Robert Gordon and James Kvaal, senior fellows at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The National Review today correctly notes that John McCain’s tax plan “offers very little in the way of direct benefits to Americans in the middle of the income scale.”

The Review then go on to suggest that the only McCain provision with any middle-class relief — doubling the dependent exemption — “would be worth only $525 per child per year. A more direct approach to reducing the overtaxation of families would be to expand the child tax credit.” We made that point back in April.

The Review finally suggests that McCain should make the child credit relief “applicable against payroll as well as income taxes.” Progressives regularly push for much the same thing, increasing the refundability of the child credit. “Refundability” is a word that dare not speak its name among conservatives. But this is also a good idea.

Kudos to the National Review.