GOP Views Tax-Cut Plan as Way to Shape Social Policy : Legislation: Proposal for a $500-per-child credit is designed to help make the law more family friendly. Conservatives vow it’s only the first step.

Congressional Republicans left little doubt Tuesday that they view their tax-cut plan as much a tool for a conservative cultural renewal as a strategy for economic recovery.

As the House Ways and Means Committee opened the first hearings on a $500-per-child tax credit that many GOP lawmakers consider the centerpiece of the “contract with America,” its sponsors insisted that its passage is critical to help protect American families from further erosion in living standards. The credit would go to those with incomes of $200,000 and less.

Putting money back in the hands of families with young children, Republicans said, would make it possible for more mothers to stay home and stay out of the work force--and for more middle-class children to be raised by their parents instead of by day-care providers. The need to strengthen family ties, GOP lawmakers said, was the driving force behind their tax agenda.

“I remember when I was a boy coming home and smelling the bread my mother was baking in the oven,” recalled Sen. Rod Grams (R-Minn.), an original sponsor of the tax credit. “I think it’s important for us to go back to the days when we could have a family where children could come home to that again, where a mother doesn’t have to put her children in day care in order to go to work to help make ends meet.”

The GOP’s plan to eliminate the so-called “marriage penalty”--in which two-income couples often pay more taxes than they would if they were single--is yet another weapon in the campaign to use tax law to make Republican social policy, several lawmakers added.

“We have to look at what we are saying about our country through the tax code,” said Rep. John Ensign (R-Nev.), a freshman member of Ways and Means. “Don’t we want to offer an incentive for people to stay married? We have got to encourage the strengthening of the family.”

To underscore their commitment to a “pro-family” tax policy, the committee’s Republican majority packed Tuesday’s hearing not just with sympathetic tax experts, but with representatives of fundamentalist Christian organizations and other political allies of the Republican version of family values.

“The Christian Coalition views the $500-per-child tax credit as the most significant provision in the ‘contract with America,’ ” said Marshall Wittman, the group’s Washington lobbyist. “Allowing families with children to retain a larger share of their hard-earned income will be a first step toward freeing American parents from the national treadmill of working long hours at the expense of time with their children, only to fail to meet the standard of living of the prior generation of one-parent wage earners. There is a genuine crisis of family income.”

Still, Republicans conceded that a $500-per-child tax credit--costing $107 billion over five years--and the repeal of the marriage penalty--costing $10 billion--would hardly be enough to mount a cultural revolution--and certainly would not be enough to make it possible for millions of Americans to quit their jobs and stay home with their children.

Conservative lawmakers vowed that the tax provisions in their contract will be just the “first step” in an aggressive series of tax cuts to be proposed as long as Republicans hold power in Congress. Their goal: make the tax code as “family friendly” as it was a generation ago, when the personal tax exemption for dependent children was worth roughly three times more than it is today on an inflation-adjusted basis.

“Some people say we are pandering to the six-pack crowd by promising tax cuts, but we are just trying to give the middle class back their own money,” said Rep. Jon Christensen (R-Neb.), another freshman.

“The debate we now should be engaged in is whether the House GOP’s proposed $500 children’s tax credit is adequate, and whether Congress should move for a $1,000-per-child tax credit,” added Gary Bauer, head of the conservative Family Research Council, who testified Tuesday.

There were hints of GOP dissent, however. Rep. Jim McCrery (R-La.) asked whether the eligibility limits for the $500-per-child tax credit should be tightened. “I’m not convinced that it’s desirable to extend this all the way up to $200,000,” McCrery said, “and I’m sure there is some doubt among other Republicans on the committee about whether we’ve discussed that issue enough.”

The few Democratic lawmakers who showed up for the hearing were resigned to lobbing hostile, yet futile, questions at Republican witnesses about the enormous costs of paying for tax cuts and the challenge of finding spending cuts to compensate for them.