Congressman Ro Khanna has adopted the idea of expanding the size of the Earned Income Tax Credit recently and attracted some media attention as a result (Lowrey at Atlantic; Ferenstein at Quartz and at Medium). The idea comes from a Neil Irwin piece at the New York Times, which the CBPP and Tax Policy Center helped prepare the background figures for.

The precise content of Khanna’s proposal is, according to Ferenstein, still forming. But in general the point is to increase EITC benefit levels substantially in order to counteract the effects of decades of wage stagnation.

Since his election last year, Khanna has quickly established himself as one of the most ambitious and progressive members of Congress. His interest in substantially expanding the EITC is clearly part of a genuine desire to do something big to fix our country’s festering inequality problem. But there are good reasons to believe that an expanded EITC is not the best approach.

The EITC gets a lot of unqualified praise because it helps to increase the disposable incomes of many low-earning families. Perhaps because it has these positive benefits, little attention is paid to the problems and downright strangeness of the program. But if we are going to start considering making it an even bigger part of the US welfare state, we really should consider these defects, both with the EITC in general and Khanna’s EITC.