Net Right Daily: Are We Over the Edge?

By Rick Manning


I wonder if we have lost our nation.

I don't come to the conclusion lightly. But, If those Americans who take more in benefits from the government than they produce have not already overwhelmed the system to form an effective majority, they are perilously close.

As early as elementary school, I wondered how the Roman Empire fell and could not understand it. I learned something of the dole system that was established to help make the poor dependent upon the Imperial government, but did not fully understand the correlations.

Now, America is on the verge of putting itself on auto-pilot to insignificance, crushed under the weight of debt to support those who have the political numbers to protect themselves from the necessary spending cuts that would save our country.

The government itself has grown so large that too many Americans look at it as the founder of their feast rather than a necessary evil.

So, while the people will rise up on issues that affect their entertainment like the Wikipedia led outrage over the Internet piracy bill, they are sanguine on real issues that cut to the heart of our nation's survival.

Since October 1, 2008, our nation has spent $5.2 trillion more than we have taken in, and the size and scope of government continues to expand. To put the total national debt into perspective, 15.2 trillion dollars is the equivalent of 15,251 billion dollars or one million dollars multiplied 15.251 million times. And we keep adding more than one million dollars multiplied by a million to it every year.

To make matters worse, the U.S. Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation found that in 2009, 51 percent of all households, which includes filers and non-filers, paid no income tax for tax year 2009. In the same year, the Committee also found that 30 percent of households that filed taxes received more money back from the government than they paid into it throughout the year.

In addition, the Wall Street Journal quotes just released U.S. Census Bureau data which shows that 48.6 percent of Americans live in a household receiving some form of taxpayer funded assistance.

That’s right. Almost one half of Americans are at least partial beneficiaries of some kind of government dole, and according to USA Today only 54 percent of the people who file tax returns end up paying any taxes at all.

Just sixteen years ago, three out of four tax filers paid some taxes, making the lower taxes argument a clear political winner. But today, with almost half of tax filers not paying any taxes and many of those actually getting more back from the government than they paid in, the political advantage enjoyed by those who pay taxes over those who demand services has been lost.

The political advantage lies with the 49 percent of the people who are in households getting taxpayer assistance instead of those who make the money and pay the freight.

CONTINUED:
http://netrightdaily.com/2012/01/are-we-over-the-edge/

It’s Starting: Feds to design health insurance for the masses

The federal government is taking on a crucial new role in the nation’s health care, designing a basic benefits package for millions of privately insured Americans. A framework for the Obama administration was released Friday.


The report by independent experts from the Institute of Medicine lays out guidelines for deciding what to include in the new “essential benefits package,” and how to keep it affordable for small businesses and taxpayers, as well as scientifically up to date.

CONTINUE:

http://patriotupdate.com/13058/its-starting-feds-to-design-health-insurance-for-the-masses

Dr. Susan Berry: Republican Senators Introduce Bill for Healthcare Freedom for Seniors

Seniors who are on Medicare are finding that more of their doctors are opting out of this government health insurance program. But, currently, if they choose to purchase another health insurance plan, or pay out of pocket to see a doctor, seniors must forfeit not only their present Social Security benefits, but also all prior Social Security benefits they have received as well. While we have been understandably focused on the intrusion of Obamacare in our lives, a lesser known federal health mandate, which has linked together Medicare and Social Security, is intruding upon the privacy and healthcare freedom of seniors.


http://biggovernment.com/sberry/2011/07/07/republican-senators-introduce-bill-for-healthcare-freedom-for-seniors/

The Wall Street Journal--September 14, 2010

Obstacle to Deficit Cutting: A Nation on Entitlements

SARA MURRAY

Efforts to tame America's ballooning budget deficit could soon confront a daunting reality: Nearly half of all Americans live in a household in which someone receives government benefits, more than at any time in history.

At the same time, the fraction of American households not paying federal income taxes has also grown—to an estimated 45% in 2010, from 39% five years ago, according to the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research organization.

A little more than half don't earn enough to be taxed; the rest take so many credits and deductions they don't owe anything. Most still get hit with Medicare and Social Security payroll taxes, but 13% of all U.S. households pay neither federal income nor payroll taxes.

"We have a very large share of the American population that is getting checks from the government," says Keith Hennessey, an economic adviser to President George W. Bush and now a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, "and an increasingly smaller portion of the population that's paying for it."

Hourly Work Force Carries Burden . Access thousands of business sources not available on the free web. Learn More.The dimensions of the budget hole were underscored Monday, when the Treasury reported that the government ran a $1.26 trillion deficit for the first 11 months of the fiscal year, on pace to be the second-biggest on record.

Yet even as Americans express concern over the deficit in opinion polls, many oppose benefit cuts, particularly with the economy on an uneven footing. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted late last month found 61% of voters were "enthusiastic" or "comfortable" with congressional candidates who support cutting federal spending in general. But 56% expressed the same enthusiasm for candidates who voted to extend unemployment benefits.

As recently as the early 1980s, about 30% of Americans lived in households in which an individual was receiving Social Security, subsidized housing, jobless benefits or other government-provided benefits. By the third quarter of 2008, 44% were, according to the most recent Census Bureau data.

That number has undoubtedly gone up, as the recession has hammered incomes. Some 41.3 million people were on food stamps as of June 2010, for instance, up 45% from June 2008. With unemployment high and federal jobless benefits now available for up to 99 weeks, 9.7 million unemployed workers were receiving checks in late August 2010, more than twice as many as the 4.2 million in August 2008.

Still more Americans—19 million by 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office—will get federal aid to buy health insurance when legislation passed this year is implemented.

The expanding federal safety net has helped shelter many families from the worst of the downturn. Charlene A. Mueller-Holden doesn't fit the stereotype of a person on benefits. Laid off from J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. in January 2008, Ms. Mueller-Holden, 38, drew unemployment for 99 weeks.

The Newark, Del., resident knocked $40 a month off her mortgage payments through the federal Making Home Affordable Program, designed to keep people in their homes by helping them modify or refinance their mortgages. But when her unemployment benefits ran out, Ms. Mueller-Holden and her husband, a government employee, couldn't afford the $1,008 monthly payments.

She turned to the Delaware State Housing Authority which, under a federally subsidized program aimed at helping families with children stay in their homes, gave her $1,000 a month for five months toward mortgage payments. She and her two sons ate lunch for free at the local school this summer, and she has applied for free lunch for one of her sons who will be a first grader this year.

Ms. Mueller-Holden's family earned too little to pay federal taxes last year, and received an extension on their state taxes. "Quite frankly, I don't care about the deficit," says Ms. Mueller-Holden. "It's going to take years upon years upon years to pay this all back," she says, so it's better to focus on job growth now and deal with the deficit later.

Government data don't show how many of the households receiving government benefits also escape federal taxes. But there is certainly some overlap between the two groups, since many benefits are aimed at those earning too little to pay income taxes and at people who don't have jobs, and who thus don't pay payroll taxes.

Cutting spending on these "entitlements" is widely seen as an inevitable ingredient in any credible deficit-reduction program. Yet despite occasional bouts of belt-tightening in Washington and bursts of discussion about restraining big government, the trend toward more Americans receiving government benefits of one sort or another has continued for more than 70 years—and shows no sign of abating.

An aging population is adding to the ranks of Americans receiving government benefits, and will continue to do so as more of the large baby-boom generation, those born between 1946 and 1964, become eligible. Today, an estimated 47.4 million people are enrolled in Medicare, up 38% from 1990. By 2030, the number is projected to be 80.4 million.

The difficulty of restraining benefits when so much of the population depends on them is now on view across Europe, where efforts to rein in deficits are forcing governments to cut popular entitlements. European countries have traditionally provided far more generous welfare benefits than the U.S. has, including monthly allowances for children regardless of income, free college tuition and universal health care. Public retirement programs are also bigger, since the combination of aging populations and low birth rates means fewer workers are paying into the system.

In recent months, political leaders in Europe have struggled to convince voters that change is necessary. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has exempted pensions from her government's planned budget cuts, reflecting the growing power of the retiree vote. French President Nicolas Sarkozy is facing mass protests, including a national strike week, as he tries to raise France's minimum retirement age from 60 to 62. Greece's government had to face down demonstrations this year when it slashed pension benefits, as it was forced to do to get bailout money from other European countries and the International Monetary Fund.

Still, Europe does offer examples that change is possible. Germany slashed benefits for the long-term unemployed in 2004, a step that analysts credit with prompting more Germans to get jobs as well as improving the country's budget balance. Cuts to entitlements are politically possible, says Daniel Gros, director of the Center for European Policy Studies, a nonpartisan think tank in Brussels, "but societies need some time to get used to the idea."

The U.S. government first offered large-scale assistance during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. The Social Security Act, passed in 1935, created the popular retirement program as well as unemployment compensation, the early stages of what became known as "welfare" and assistance to the blind and elderly. In the 1940s, the G.I. Bill offered unemployment benefits, education assistance and loans to veterans. That same decade, Washington began offering free or reduced-price lunches to children from low-income families and, a decade later, monthly benefits to the disabled.

Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs brought food stamps plus Medicare and Medicaid. In the 1970s, Supplemental Security Income was created on top of routine Social Security benefits for the poorest of the elderly and disabled, and so-called Section 8 vouchers began subsidizing rental housing. The earned-income tax credit was launched in 1975 to offer extra cash to low-wage workers, and grew in the 1990s to become one of the government's principle antipoverty programs.

Benefits for children were expanded in 1997 with the State Children's Health Insurance Program during the Clinton administration—and were expanded again in 2009. Shortly after President Barack Obama took office, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the stimulus bill, which among other things extended unemployment compensation and offered incentives for states to cover more workers.

All this is expensive. Payments to individuals—a budget category that includes all federal benefit programs plus retirement benefits for federal workers—will cost $2.4 trillion this year, up 79%, adjusted for inflation, from a decade earlier when the economy was stronger. That represents 64.3% of all federal outlays, the highest percentage in the 70 years the government has been measuring it. The figure was 46.7% in 1990 and 26.2% in 1960.

When the economy recovers, some—but not all—current recipients of federal aid are likely to lose their benefits, which some say is reason enough to keep them going for now.

"If there became an expectation that government was going to provide over half of the population's well-being to a significant degree without requiring anything of the recipients, there would be reason for concern," says Robert Reischauer, a former Congressional Budget Office director and now president of the Urban Institute, a liberal-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C. "I don't think that's where we are or where we're headed."

The public appears divided on what to do. A new Allstate/National Journal poll found that 35% of voters want the government to make sure future retirees receive all the benefits they've been promised even if it means raising taxes. Another 34% said the government should make retirement programs "financially sustainable" by making some cuts to those benefits and raising some taxes, and 22% said they'd be willing to see benefits cut to restrain the programs' rising costs.

The call for restraining benefits resonates with voters like Robert Letherman. "You name it, someone is lining up to get bailed out, or a handout, courtesy of the hard-working American taxpayer," says Mr. Letherman, 39, a real-estate developer in Elkhart, Ind.

Mr. Letherman says he has struggled through the recession like many others, but doesn't qualify for government assistance. His income has declined 40% since 2007. Some $4 million in development projects percolating in the spring of 2007 have since been shelved.

He supports helping people in need, says Mr. Letherman, but believes many people game the system. Extended unemployment benefits, for example, give some Americans an excuse not to go back to work, he says. If it were up to him, government would be half the size it is now.

He favors eliminating pensions for all government workers, excluding military and intelligence personnel, and would impose a nationwide sales tax to pay off the country's debt. "If we continue down the path of deficit spending, the great recession of 2008 will be nothing compared to what we will face in five, 10, 20 years," he says.

Cutting federal benefits while the economy is still weak would be a mistake, some analysts say, because it could hinder recovery by giving consumers less money to spend.

Paul Hester has relied on government benefits since he lost his job in June 2009. The 54-year-old microbiologist has a master's degree and was earning a salary of $50,000 at the Indiana State Department of Health. He says he regularly looks for jobs, but has landed only two interviews in the past year.

Influenced by the credit wariness of parents who lived through the Great Depression, the Indianapolis resident has always been thrifty. He once watched his dad walk into a dealership, "plop down $10,000 in cash and buy a car." Mr. Hester has one credit card, and before he was unemployed, he tried to pay it off every month.

He lives on $375 a week in unemployment checks and his health-insurance premiums are subsidized by the federal government under a provision in the fiscal stimulus enacted by Congress in February 2009. His daughter, a college sophomore, pays for part of her schooling with Pell Grants, a federal program for low-income students that is set to expand because of new legislation that increased the number and size of grants.

"I don't like taking government money," says Mr. Hester, but "what else is there?"

—Marcus Walker contributed to this article.


Write to Sara Murray at sara.murray@wsj.com

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703791804575439732358241708.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection

Six Months to Go Until The Largest Tax Hikes in History

Six Months to Go Until The Largest Tax Hikes in History
From Ryan Ellis on Thursday, July 1, 2010 4:15 PM

In just six months, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect. They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves on January 1, 2011:

First Wave: Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief

In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families. These will all expire on January 1, 2011:

Personal income tax rates will rise. The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed). The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent. All the rates in between will also rise. Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates. The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:

- The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%

- The 25% bracket rises to 28%

- The 28% bracket rises to 31%

- The 33% bracket rises to 36%

- The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%

Higher taxes on marriage and family. The “marriage penalty” (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income. The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child. The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level. The dependent care and adoption tax credits will be cut.

The return of the Death Tax. This year, there is no death tax. For those dying on or after January 1 2011, there is a 55 percent top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two homes and a retirement account could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones.

Higher tax rates on savers and investors. The capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in 2011. The dividends tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6 percent in 2011. These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013. Retirement accounts are not exempt (unless you are a government employee).


Second Wave: Obamacare

There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011. They include:

The “Medicine Cabinet Tax” Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).

The “Special Needs Kids Tax” This provision of Obamacare imposes a cap on flexible spending accounts (FSAs) of $2500 (Currently, there is no federal government limit). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education.

The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike. This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.

Third Wave: The Alternative Minimum Tax and Employer Tax Hikes

When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they’ll be in for a nasty surprise—the AMT won’t be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired. The major items include:

The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year. According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, Congress’ failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families—rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.

Small business expensing will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear. Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly-deduct, or “depreciate”) equipment purchases up to $250,000. This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can expense half of their purchases of equipment. In January of 2011, all of it will have to be “depreciated.”

Taxes will be raised on all types of businesses. There are literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place. The biggest is the loss of the “research and experimentation tax credit,” but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs.

Tax Benefits for Education and Teaching Reduced. The deduction for tuition and fees will not be available. Tax credits for education will be limited. Teachers will no longer be able to deduct classroom expenses. Coverdell Education Savings Accounts will be cut. Employer-provided educational assistance is curtailed. The student loan interest deduction will be disallowed for hundreds of thousands of families.

Charitable Contributions from IRAs no longer allowed. Under current law, a retired person with an IRA can contribute up to $100,000 per year directly to a charity from their IRA. This contribution also counts toward an annual “required minimum distribution.” This ability will no longer be there.

Read more: http://www.atr.org/six-months-untilbr-largest-tax-hikes-a5171##ixzz0sVAFZ8Hv

States Fighting Back Against Obamacare: Virginia

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/07/07/states-fighting-back-against-obamacare-virginia/

Why We Must Win and we MUST educate

Why We Must Win and we MUST educate (Not seeing us doing this enough)

Here’s an update to other headlines that underscore why it is so important for you and your friends to vote against every liberal on the ballot in 151 days.

•Obama’s policies are going to cost us jobs.

•Obama took additional steps recently to undermine traditional marriage by extending spousal benefits to homosexual partners of federal employees. I’d like to know how the president justifies the continued discrimination against the heterosexual partners of unmarried federal employees.

•70% of likely voters want to crack down on employers who hire illegal aliens. Amazingly, the Obama Administration is trying to overturn state laws that do just that. So, what immigration laws will it enforce?

•While hardworking families of the Gulf Coast were worried about losing their jobs and homes due to the gushing oil spill, Obama was partying with Paul McCartney at the White House Wednesday night.

•With Obama’s support, the Democrat-dominated House of Representatives voted recently to repeal the ban on open homosexuality in the military. How did your representative vote?

•If banning military recruiters from campus and breaking the law in the process wasn’t bad enough, here’s more evidence that Obama’s Supreme Court nominee is a leftwing judicial activist.

CCTA member Jan Parys