My initial take on Mitt Romney's child allowance proposal: It looks good. As @dylanmatt writes here, some of the pay-fors are controversial, and it may not reduce poverty as much as Dem proposals to up the Child Tax Credit. But it's a better framework. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22264520/mitt-romney-checks-parents-4200

The big perk of Romney's proposal is that, instead of a complicated tax credit administered by the IRS, he just wants to provide a monthly cash payment handled by the Social Security Administration. As @MattBruenig has been arguing for a while, that's a much better approach.

The controversial part is that he wants to pay for his proposal in part by eliminating or shrinking some tax credits and programs that help the poor. He'd simplify and shrink the EITC and—this is a biggie—eliminate TANF, aka cash welfare as we now know it.

(Romney also wants to eliminate the State and Local Tax deduction, which may be a nonstarter for Chuck Schumer, but we can discuss that another day.)

The thing is: I don't necessarily think replacing those other programs/tax credits with a simple payment is necessarily a bug, even if it comes at the cost of some poverty fighting power.

Yes, we want to build the welfare state. But we also badly need to simplify it.

We have a serious problem with poor people not participating in safety net prorams in this country. Far fewer people use food SNAP, the EITC, and Medicaid than are eligible, in part because of the because of bureaucracy...

And the more tax-credits you pile on, the more kludgey, opaque, and difficult to whole thing becomes.

As for the TANF block grant: I don't think that it's a program we should be trying to save for the long term. Trading it away now honestly seems smart. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/06/how-welfare-reform-failed.html

The problem TANF is a) The block grant isn't adjusted for inflation, so it's shrinking anyway. b) Many states basically use it as a social services slush fund (from the piece above).

To be blunt, Democrats are probably better of getting rid of TANF now, while the program still has some trade-in value, and thinking of new, better ways to fill whatever holes it leaves behind.

Anyway, I'm going to marinate on this more and actually talk to some people (you know, like a journalist is supposed to do). But that's my gut reaction.