The child tax-credit is to society’s benefit. Santorem’s seven will be paying more in taxes (specifically Social Security) than Zero’s two, and that’s just how it is. It’s exactly the same argument DINCs use when they don’t want increased public-school taxation: “We don’t have kids, so why should we have to pay school taxes?” True, but they do have houses which, so the argument goes, gain in value with the purportedly better schools. (And NO, I’m not saying that taxes improve public schools, nor that ANYone should be paying taxes for public schools; but that’s the way things exist today.)
No, it’s not the same argument. People don’t pay more in property taxes in correlation with the harder they work to make money. Santorum’s scheme does create that effect.
And how does the argument that paying more local property taxes to supposedly boost the quality of local schools and thus property values apply here? It’s a bogus argument for its own sake—school SAT scores are increased by having more smart parents and hence kids in town, not by more school spending—but it absolutely doesn’t apply when talking about a federal income tax.