Year-end flurries of legislative activity are a congressional tradition, and this year is seeing a supercharged version. With the clock ticking on Democratic control of Congress, many are encouraging lawmakers to revive President Biden’s expanded child tax credit, which sent $250 per child, plus a little more for young children, to nearly all parents each month for the last half of 2021.

The impulse behind this proposal is laudable—progressives see expanding the child tax credit as a means of reducing rates of child poverty and giving parents a little more financial room to breathe. Unfortunately, some of our friends on the right are reflexively opposed to the child tax credit (CTC). The Wall Street Journal, whose editorial board has opposed pro-family tax reform as “social engineering,” recently ran an op-ed calling the CTC a “failed experiment.” The Journal seems to prefer that policymakers stick with a 1980s-style playbook: lower taxes, less regulations, and entitlement reform. …