In the final weeks of a presidential campaign, all kinds of ideas are regularly thrown around, like the proverbial spaghetti against the wall, to see what sticks. And the various pledges and promises made by Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump would all rely on a Congress friendly to their dictates. But under the hood of a foolish election cycle, tectonic plates are shifting.

Like the New York Times’ Claire Cain Miller recently reported that the Trump campaign has spoken out broadly in support of ideas like an expanded child tax credit (CTC), child care assistance and paid leave for new parents. While the details may be somewhat hazy, she wrote, expressing support for them at all is “part of a shift in recent years within the Republican Party, and possibly the role of government in American family life.”

This shift is real. It is difficult, if not impossible, to look at the Republican Party of a decade or more ago and not see how the Republican Party is actively undergoing a slow but meaningful evolution in a pro-family direction.

But policy details matter. And the difference between the Trump-Vance campaign’s statements on family policy and where Harris-Walz would focus his energy illustrates real disagreements about what authentic pro-family efforts might consist of.

The Harris campaign wants to revive the pandemic-era CTC, which provided monthly checks to all parents regardless of whether they worked or not. This approach failed to achieve overwhelming popularity, even among working-class parents, and universal payments ended after six months. Her campaign has also mentioned plans to increase the CTC to $6,000 in a child’s first year of life, expand funding for preschool and use federal funds to limit a family’s child care expenses to seven percent of the family income.

Again, this would only happen in the unlikely event of joint control of Congress by the Democratic party (and perhaps not even then). Biden’s administration, which fell into disarray.

Trump’s plans are a little vaguer. In a statement to the TimesCampaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said the former president supports plans to “expand the child tax credit, reduce child care costs that have risen 32 percent since Kamala Harris took office (as vice president), and continue to support expansions of family leave.” ”

If Republicans control Congress, figuring out what that might look like in practice requires some alchemy. In 2017, then-President Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which consolidated or eliminated some aspects of the tax code while doubling the size of the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000. If Congress doesn’t act next year, the CTC will revert to its previous amount, effectively raising taxes for millions of parents.

Whether the Trump campaign will take action to expand the CTC beyond the current top amount of $2,000, or simply settle for making that level permanent (as the current platform states), remains to be seen. Vice presidential candidate Senator J.D. Vance is known for supporting a larger CTC with more generous support for low- to moderate-income households, as well as a blunt statement on the debate stage that we will have to “spend more money on child care, but those have yet to be converted into explicit campaign proposals.

Assuming that Congress is interested in improving how the CTC provides economic support to parents, a number of socially conservative writers and scholars, including myself and Brad Wilcox of IFS, have signed a letter showing lawmakers some opportunities for improvement offered. In the letter, we propose that Congress increase the top value of the CTC to $3,000; increase credit’s ability to support working-class households by increasing repayability; reduce or abolish marriage penalties, for example by abolishing head of household status; reduce fraud by requiring parents claiming the credit to have a taxpayer identification number; and introduce a $2,000 upfront bonus for new parents.

These options won’t be introduced as written, but they provide some ways to think about the credit rating that Congress can consider. In particular, a ‘baby bonus’ would be a very high-profile way to provide economic support to new parents when they need it most – around childbirth – rather than shifting support to the tax return structure, which they may not receive until the following month. will receive. April.

That this letter was signed by a cross-section of pro-life and/or pro-family leaders is remarkable. And more broadly, there are other indications that conservative thinking about supporting families continues to shift. Look no further than a recent one First things post from Rachel Bovard, vice president of programs at the Conservative Partnership Institute, a think tank that has combined Tea Party energy with the rise of the Make America Great Again (“MAGA”) movement.

Bovard, a former Senate staffer and longtime conservative-populist voice, is still finalizing the policy details. But her message is broadly correct: Conservatives must respond to universalist programs from the left, not with a prescription from across the board. tax cuts and business credits, but with policies that empower parents economically and give them the freedom to find the work-life balance that best suits their lifestyle.

Pro-family conservatives, who have grown tired of the left’s leading proactive policies, might happily imagine a future Vice President Vance leading negotiations in Congress and prioritizing allocating resources to a larger CTC and a more pluralistic and supportive framework for childcare. Or perhaps Republicans in Congress will face a Democratic administration that largely inherits the policies of the current occupant of the White House.

With just over a week until Election Day, the future of family policy in the US is still largely to be determined – but there is clear potential for a better future.

Patrick T. Brown (@PTBwrites) is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he writes the weekly “Family mattersnewsletter.