College Tax Credit Income Limits- Expedient, not Appropriate

The title says it all. Politics require the college tax credit limits, but it's absurd to argue that they're fair or that for any reason other than hard, cold necessity they *should* be there. If we were fiscally responsible, we would associate programs like this with specific tax revenues and the benefit could be extended without regard to income because the taxes would be adjusted properly, like premiums are adjusted for insurance.

But we aren't fiscally responsible, so instead we spend money we don't have and find unfair ways to spend a little bit less by excluding anybody we can find an excuse to exclude without feeling too guilty about it.
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Well like anything else, the college tax credit also comes down to making choices given the scarcity of available resources- and this applies to micro as well as macro.

The choice of income limits for the college tax credit may not seem fair, but it is a question of giving up the absolute minimum amount of revenue to get the desired result. This is a targeted tax credit. That doesn't only mean that it is targeted to a specific group- college students- which it is, it also means that the government is trying to achieve a specific, targeted result- to get more people to enroll in college.

From a policy standpoint, there's no point in giving away tax revenues to a student whose family is making $200,000 a year. While this may not equate to the highest lifestyle (depending on expense, debts, geographic region) it is certainly one where that family will send their child to college, regardless of the financial burden. That college tax credit (while it would be nice to have) will not make the difference in their decision to have their child go to college. To a family making $50,000 a year, it might.