Every year, it seems, Congress adds a handful of new tax credits. Most new tax credits are about modifying economic behavior: buy new doors, get a tax credit; take in hurricane victims, get a tax credit; build new windmills, get a tax credit. Some tax credits are more broad: the child tax credit, this year’s “Making Work Pay” tax credit, the Earned-Income Tax Credit. Most of these credits are reduced for the upper-middle class and eliminated for the wealthy.

Obama proposed a handful of new tax credits in his State of the Union address last week. For conservatives, there are arguments against tax credits: they make the tax burden more progressive, they distort the economy by picking winners and losers, and they complicate the tax code. But there’s one big argument in favor of tax credits: they lower people’s tax burdens.