Life abounds with ironies.
Back in 2012, one of the things that sunk the campaign of Mitt Romney for US President were his comments about the "47 per cent". These were the people, he claimed in a leaked video, that the Right had to write off because they receive more in benefits than they pay in tax.
Now a senator for Utah, Romney is leading the charge in a new bipartisan push to introduce a new child tax credit in the USA that would, in part, be fully refundable. Similar,' existing credits are only offset against Actual tax liabilities and those who pay little of ever see little benefit accordingly. By making the credit fully refundable, all parents would receive the full benefit regardless of how much or how little tax they pay.
Further reforms would increase the "refundability" of existing programs with the overall effect kind of resembling a UBI of sorts for very young children. The full details are here.
It has to be stressed that these are only proposals. A while ago, Marco Rubio - who is also moving towards One Nation Conservatism - proposed something similar. While there has been some progress, the ambitions have not been fully realised to date/
But what this continues to illustrate is that this is a happy space for conservatives to be in. New Zealand National Party - please pay attention!