Many conservatives, led by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and many of my colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute, are looking for ways to reduce taxes on middle-class families. Lee, along with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, are pushing a plan to expand the child tax credit, and to allow families to use the money to offset the payroll taxes they paid.

A simpler approach, in my view, is simply to cut people’s payroll taxes. Why should we cut people checks to refund their payroll taxes rather than simply free them from paying the tax in the first place?Jim Capretta argues that today at NRO: