Patrick T. Brown
Fellow
Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where his work with the Life and Family Initiative focuses on developing a robust pro-family economic agenda and supporting families as the cornerstone of a healthy and flourishing society.
Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where his work focuses on developing a robust pro-family economic agenda and supporting families as the cornerstone of a healthy and flourishing society.
His writing has been published in The New York Times, National Review, Politico, The Washington Post, and USA Today, and he has spoken on college campuses and Capitol Hill on topics from welfare reform to child-care and education policy.
He has published reports on paid leave and family policy with the Institute for Family Studies, and edited an essay series featuring working-class voices for American Compass. He is an advisory board member of Humanity Forward and the Center on Child and Family Policy and a contributing editor to Public Discourse.
Prior to joining EPPC, Patrick served as a senior policy advisor to Congress’ Joint Economic Committee. There, he helped lead research about how to make it more affordable to raise a family and more effectively invest in youth and young adults. He also previously worked a government-relations staffer for Catholic Charities USA.
Patrick graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a degree in political science and economics. He also holds a Master’s in Public Affairs from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He and his wife Jessica have four young children and live in Columbia, S.C.
Gimme Shelter
Patrick T. Brown
David Wessel’s book Only the Rich Can Play offers an uncomfortable reminder that no matter how much you may appreciate an idea’s intellectual lineage or conceptual clarity, no plan survives first contact with the enemy.
Articles
American Compass / October 21, 2021
Why Working-Class Parents Don’t Buy What D.C. Is Selling
Patrick T. Brown
If politicians want expanded child benefits to stick, they need to listen to the families that will benefit most.
Articles
The New York Times / September 14, 2021
Early Childhood Districts: A Capita Symposium
Patrick T. Brown
It is difficult to look at the existing public education system and recommend it as a model for ensuring high-quality child care for newborns, toddlers, and preschoolers.
Articles
Capita / September 8, 2021
Working Americans Are Speaking. Are Politicians Listening?
Patrick T. Brown
For a “populist” agenda to be more than a noisy veneer on pre-existing preferences, partisans of the right and left need to recognize the distance between their favored narratives and the ones that keep working-class Americans up at night.
Articles
Newsweek / August 23, 2021
More Beautiful Backyards
Patrick T. Brown
To be successful, the pro-housing movement must respect the desire of homeowners to influence the look and feel of their neighborhood. Showing such flexibility will help smooth the path for more housing, in more styles, and in more neighborhoods, across the United States.
Articles
City Journal / August 12, 2021
Where School Choice Legislation Falls Short
Patrick T. Brown
A conservative educational agenda needs to move beyond choice alone and toward a system of educational pluralism in which government dollars are used to support a multiplicity of schooling options.
Articles
Washington Examiner / August 6, 2021
Where Should New Parents Settle Post-COVID?
Patrick T. Brown
As the ripple effects from COVID start to fade, making more communities attractive to couples and families who want to move should become a priority of any pro-family policy agenda.
Articles
Institute for Family Studies / August 5, 2021
How Conservatives Could Solve the Child Care Crunch
Patrick T. Brown
If conservatives are serious about opposing progressives’ prescriptions for big-government solutions to child care affordability, they need to come up with proactive ideas beyond just tax credits.
Articles
Newsweek / July 12, 2021
The Communitarian Case for a Universal Child Benefit
Patrick T. Brown
A conservative family policy should be about supporting families as the core building block of a flourishing society — and recognizing the work parents put into rearing the next generation.
Articles
Real Clear Policy / June 18, 2021
Child Care Pluralism: Supporting Working Families in Their Full Diversity
Patrick T. Brown
Expanding the array of options available to American families, whether it be care by a relative or parent, or a daycare or child care center, should be a prime focus of public policy.
Articles
Niskanen Center Publications / June 17, 2021
By making an expanded child tax credit available for one year to all but the wealthiest households, the Biden administration is aiming both to strike a major blow against child poverty and to create a political constituency to guarantee the benefit’s longevity.
Polling, however, finds the child benefits have lagged in popularity. A new YouGov/American Compass poll found that only 28 percent of voters said they preferred the expanded Child Tax Credit to be made permanent and go to “all families, regardless of whether they work to earn money.” This could be because of the credit’s slow rollout and the submerged nature of carrying out social policy through the tax code. But it could have more to do with the disconnect between policymakers in D.C. and working-class parents, particularly when it comes to family policy.
The biggest divide may be on the importance of work. For a new report, the Institute for Family Studies (a conservative think tank) and partner organizations hosted focus groups of white parents in southeastern Ohio, Black parents around Atlanta and Hispanic parents in the San Antonio area. We heard parents talk about work as a way of paying into the system, the price of admission for being eligible for government benefits like the expanded child tax credit. “Some people will be responsible with it,” said a Hispanic dad in Texas. “The other people will just live off of it.”
My ideal form of child benefit would look like the one proposed by Senator Mitt Romney this year, which would streamline the tangle of tax code provisions for families into one monthly benefit. But it’s clear from talking to working-class parents that they want something more from family policy than just a check. They want to feel that their benefits were earned. If politicians want expanded child benefits to stick, they need to listen to the families that will benefit most.
Click here to read the rest of this piece at the New York Times's website.
Patrick T. Brown (@PTBwrites) is a fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He was a senior policy adviser to Congress’s Joint Economic Committee.