Leave it to Being Daddy to not only beat me to a topic, but discuss it so completely that I have little left to add. He's been talking the last couple of days about the absurd child care tax credit, which puts money back in the pocket of those that farm out the child-raising responsibilities and offers no incentives to at-home parents to raise their own children.

Suffice it to say that I agree with everything he has to say. The tax system is really a set of incentives designed to alter behavior, and that makes the credit all the more silly, given that it encourages folks to leave their children in day care. While it was originally intended to give a much-needed break to families that had no choice but to work two jobs, it's now used by plenty of two-income families that can easily hack it on one salary.

I did some snooping around, and found that at least one pending bill would work to fix the problem by getting us a similar deal. It was introduced in June by Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. See the PDFs of the introduction here (page 1) and here (page 2).

My cynical assumption is, of course, that the bill has a snowball's chance in hell, given that a freshman senator who sits on a bunch of non-kid-centric committees has little real sway on family issues. But I'd encourage you to contact her here with any you-go-girl comments. And, of course, it never hurts to write your senators.

There are a couple of interesting at-home parent pieces out there, but I wanted to get this out of mind first. I'll get to the press clippings in the next 48 hours.