GREASING THE SKIDS FOR UBI:

He has unveiled a major proposal to provide $350 per month ($4,200 per year) to every child in America up to the age of 6, as well as $250 per month ($3,000 per year) to every child age 6 to 17. Each family would be limited to a maximum of $1,250 per month ($15,000 per year). The program would be a model of simplicity, with the Social Security Administration mailing out checks every month. That's a big difference from the Earned Income Tax Credit, which typically provides cash only in one lump sum after the tax year ends.

"This plan," Romney says, "would immediately lift nearly three million children out of poverty, while providing a bridge to the middle class." There is also an unexpected bonus: Because it would trim other programs and repeal the federal deduction for state and local taxes, it would have a net budgetary cost of zero.

To hardline conservatives, this proposal may sound like a left-wing dream, vastly expanding dependence on federal handouts. But to anyone who thinks we have a collective responsibility to prevent serious hardship among innocent people, particularly those too young to fend for themselves, it represents a giant step toward a more humane social welfare system that also advances sound conservative principles.

The idea of fighting poverty with direct cash has an intellectual pedigree that notably includes Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman, who advised Republican presidents and was revered on the right. He proposed payments through a "negative income tax," which he argued was a more effective, efficient remedy for poverty than a hodgepodge of programs that somehow spent far more money than the supposed beneficiaries ever got.

Romney's plan has the same virtue. It mirrors a proposal by Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet of Colorado and Sherrod Brown of Ohio thiat enjoys broad support among congressional Democrats. A report from the centrist Niskanen Center in Washington, "The Conservative Case for a Child Allowance," concluded that Romney's plan would reduce child poverty by one-third. Ernie Tedeschi, a Treasury economist in the Obama administration, told The Washington Post it would be "among the most pro-family, anti-poverty policies in a generation."

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