The Heritage Foundation wants a "Manhattan Project for the nuclear family" to boost marriage and birth rates.
Its draft proposals are landing like an atomic bomb among proponents of free markets who had previously been aligned with the leading conservative think tank.
A draft executive summary of the forthcoming family policy paper that is circulating among conservative economic policy types proposes substantial tax and cash incentives for marriage and childbirth.
It's clear that Heritage is going all-in on family policy. A speech Heritage President Kevin Roberts gave at the National Conservatism Conference last week also previewed that family policy will be a cornerstone of the organization's policy agenda.
Prudence, Roberts argued, "recognizes that the interests of the family and the national interest are not merely aligned, they are one and the same. It demands that we ask of every policy, every proposal: Will this strengthen the American family?" Roberts said.
I got a copy of the draft Heritage Foundation family policy paper executive summary that calls for a whole-of-government "Manhattan Project to restore the nuclear family," as first reported by the Washington Post last week.
Here are some new details about the big, bold tax and economic proposals to boost marriage and birth outlined in that draft and giving some free-market advocates heartburn:
Make the $17,280 adoption tax credit eligible for married parents of newborns, with unmarried parents eligible for half that amount, distributed annually in four equal installments.
Make that credit 25% more — $21,600 — for married parents who already have two or more children, as a "Large Family Bonus" to "acknowledge the importance of large families."
Build on the idea of Trump Accounts (tax-advantaged savings accounts with $1,000 federal contribution for babies born between 2025 and 2028) by bumping up the deposit to $2,000.
Plus, create a $2,000 deposit in another account redeemable only upon legal marriage, and that becomes taxable at age 30 to "incentivize marriage when children are most likely to be conceived."
"Make every credit, program, and tax benefit provided for paid childcare available for parental child raising," arguing that programs like childcare tax credits and Head Start are "pushing both parents into the workforce at the cost of time spent raising their children as many prefer."
Those ideas are included under the "Start Supporting Married Families" pillar of proposals. It also calls for the government to "Stop Punishing Married Families," listing changes to public assistance programs that conservatives have long argued creates a "marriage penalty," in addition to stricter work requirements for able-bodied adults.
The third "Restore the American Dream" pillar argues that high costs have prohibited Americans from achieving the family ideal, calling for not only a strong economy and a nation free from debt, but a "restoration of our national culture and spirit." It promises recommendations to address the problems of "a decline in religious attendance, idolization of careerism, a broken education system, and through predatory tech, drug (legal and illegal), and pornography industries."
Heritage hasn't confirmed the authenticity of the draft details — and of course, a draft is subject to change. The final product is expected to be rolled out in the coming weeks.
But it's already getting sharp pushback within the conservative movement based on the leaked draft.
Joel Griffith, a senior fellow at Advancing American Freedom who previously worked at Heritage, balked at the economic policy proposals articulated in the draft — pointing out that Hungary saw just a "modest bump in the birth rate" after its government made substantial investments on subsidies intended to boost the birth rate.
Griffith estimated that the first-year costs of the proposal would be about $80 billion annually, a sum that he says "would exceed the cost of Obamacare annually as recently as 2018," pointing to the $57 billion cost of Affordable Care Act subsidies that year.
"It's on par with the expansion of government that we saw with Obamacare," Griffith said.
Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy at Heritage, called the comparisons to Obamacare "ridiculous." The whole of the proposal, he said, would result in tax savings for working families — but that actual numbers would have to wait for the paper's official release.
The Post story last week also raised eyebrows with some surprising quotes from two unnamed sources within the think tank alarmed about the paper. One compared it to "eugenics" and another decried the socially conservative think tanks proposal's as "social engineering" that amounts to "an outright steamrolling of the limited government folks."
Severino noted that Heritage has long opposed abortion, particularly abortions based on a down syndrome diagnosis, and has been on record decrying abortion clinics targeting minority neighborhoods.
The draft, meanwhile, decries "extraordinary technical solutions" like IVF and genetic screening championed by some pro-natalists that "envisions a world of artificial wombs and custom ordered lab-created babies on demand."
When it comes to "social engineering," Severino noted that incentives for marriage and recognizing it as a social good are reflected far and wide in U.S. law, from tax filing being based on marital status to approving green cards faster for a spouse.
"The family is on life support, and we're in danger of losing the patient, that's why we have to meet the moment and mobilize so that future generations will grow up in a vibrant, flourishing nation, not a declining one," Severino said
And the draft recognizes that it is challenging longtime conservative thought: "For family policy to succeed, old orthodoxies must be re-examined and innovative approaches embraced, but more than that, we need to mobilize a nation to meet this moment. We need a Manhattan Project to restore the nuclear family."
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