Mitt Romney has conceded that his thoughts, expressed at
that Boca Raton, Florida fundraiser, were not "elegantly” stated.
Those mocking
him might concede he has tabled one of the mega-issues of our time.
Can America continue down the path President Obama is
taking us on, to a time soon and certain when a majority of wage-earners pay no
income taxes but a majority of citizens receive federal benefits?
“There are 47% of the people who will vote for the
president no matter what,” said Mitt, “the 47% who … are dependent upon
government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a
responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health
care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. … These are people who pay no income
tax … .”
What was wrong with this?
One slice of that 47% who receive benefits are
students who will pay taxes later.
Not necessarily...
And in any case, if we're talking high school and college students older than say 16... definitely those older than 18... shouldn't these students be working and paying taxes? I know I was as a working student!
A larger slice are retirees on Social
Security and Medicare who paid into both programs all their working lives.
Now Pat is mixing apples and oranges. We're not talking Social Security and Medicare "contributions" - nor "benefits" for that matter; we're talking about income taxes and it seems to me that if we're gonna have income taxes... than everyone who earns income should pay his or her fair share - and I simply can't imagine 47% of the the American People paying 0% as meeting any reasonable individual's definition of "fair."
But what was right about what Romney said was discerned
two centuries ago by that governmental genius John C. Calhoun:
“The necessary result … of the unequal fiscal action of
the government is to divide the community into two great classes; one
consisting of those who … pay the taxes … and bear exclusively the burden of
supporting the government; and the other, of those who are the recipients of
their proceeds, through disbursements, and who are, in fact, supported by the
government; or, in fewer words, to divide it into taxpayers and tax consumers.”
A nation sundered between taxpayers and tax consumers,
said Calhoun, “must give rise to two parties and to violent conflicts and
struggles between them, to obtain the control of the government.”
Is that not a fair description of where we are today?
Sen. Gene McCarthy used to say every citizen has three
duties: to bear arms in defense of his country, to vote and to pay taxes.
(*PAUSE*)
Is it
a good thing that this ideal is laughed at, that the draft is abolished, that
scores of millions pay nothing in income taxes?
No... no it's not...
Retired Americans living on Social Security, exempt from
taxes because their income is modest, are not the problem.
But in 2010, some 4.4 million Americans were on welfare
rolls, 22 million on government payrolls, 23 million were receiving Earned Income
Tax Credit checks, 44 million were on food stamps, 50 million were on Medicaid,
and 70 million wage-earners were paying no income taxes.
For most of these folks, Obama’s Party, which would
expand benefits, tax the rich even more and redistribute the wealth, is their
party. And understandably so.
By every standard, America is a far more prosperous
country than in the 1950s. Yet, then, there were no food stamps. Today, 47
million Americans are on food stamps at an annual cost of $72 billion.
Does it not say something alarming when one in seven
Americans cannot rely upon themselves or their families for their daily bread?
During the Chicago school strike, we learned that 86% of the 350,000 pupils were getting free or subsidized meals twice a day.
And here's what no one besides me seems to be pointing out: If these 350,000 qualify for free or subsidized meals twice a day... doesn't logic dictate the assumption that their families (or more likely single parents) are collecting SNAP benefits based upon having to feed these children three meals a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year?
In other words... there must be a hell of a lot of double-dipping going on!
What kind of society have we become when children in a
great city cannot rely on mothers or fathers for a bowl of cereal in the
morning and a brown bag with a sandwich and apple in it for lunch?
Indeed...
Federal, state and local government together now consume 37% of the economy. Can we not see where this is leading us, by looking at
Spain or Italy - or California?
Apparently many people... perhaps most people... can't - or simply won't - or simply don't care.
(*SHRUG*)
In the Golden Land, the state tax burden has been shifted
heavily onto the most successful, while state benefits have exploded. Result: For the first time since California entered the
Union, the young and middle class are moving out, not in, heading for Colorado,
Arizona, Idaho and Nevada. And California has become the destination of choice
for the immigrant poor, legal and illegal.
Yet, the November ballot has a proposal to raise the
state income tax on the rich to the highest in the nation, 13.3%.
Romney indicated that folks deeply dependent on
government are almost impossible for an advocate of smaller government to win
over. Is he entirely off base when Washington, D.C., the most
government-dependent city in America, went 93-7 for Obama in 2008?
In his 1935 State of the Union, Franklin Roosevelt
himself warned about exactly what Mitt Romney is talking about:
“Continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and
moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole
out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the
human spirit. … The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of
relief.”
That greatest generation got off the narcotic of
dependency.
Unfortunately, for tens of millions today, that narcotic
has become indispensable. And “spiritual and moral disintegration” describes
exactly the condition of all too many who have come to rely upon it.
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