Senate Democrats introduced a bill this week called the Working Families Tax Relief Act (WFTRA) that is being touted as the consensus synthesis of a bunch of tax credit proposals Democrats have floated over the past three years. Like all means-tested tax credit proposals, this one is a hideous kludge far inferior to regular social-democratic family benefits. But worse than that, the WFTRA uses the dreaded trapezoid design that has the effect of depriving the poorest children in favor of richer children.

The US currently has two major child tax credit schemes. The first, called the “Child Tax Credit,” phases in based on earnings, meaning that richer parents get more benefits than poorer parents unless they are so rich that their earnings exceed the phase-out threshold. The second, called the “Earned Income Tax Credit” (EITC), is actually two different tax credits smooshed together in a bizarre formation. The first part of the EITC is what some other countries call a Working Tax Credit, and it provides trapezoidal-shaped benefits to childless workers. The second part of the EITC is just another Child Tax Credit that has all the problems of the official CTC.

The bill wisely realizes that these two programs (CTC and EITC) are basically duplicative of one another and so envisions a grand reformation of them into a better shape. The new shape makes the official Child Tax Credit “fully refundable,” meaning that poor children get the same amount as less poor children. But it does not make the second CTC that lives inside the EITC fully refundable. So, taken together, we have a new child tax benefits regime that continues to screw over the poorest children in the country for absolutely no reason.