The Republican challenger speaks an uncomfortable truth — that it's hard enough to beat an incumbent president without almost half the electorate feeling dependent on him for some kind of government benefit.
The conveniently timed release of a video taped in May and leaked by Mother Jones in September has the usual suspects in the mainstream media chattering that Mitt Romney's candidacy for president is now doomed.
Even if it is true, you just can't say that 47% of Americans are dependent on government and that they're hard to reach politically because of that.
In one clip, Romney describes how his campaign would not try to appeal to "47% of the people" who will vote for President Obama "no matter what."
They are, he says, "dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them."
No doubt there are people who are dependent on government due to circumstances beyond their control. But it's been a main thrust of this administration to make as many people dependent on government as possible — witness ObamaCare — and its motives haven't always been pure.
This is the administration from which comes a steady drumbeat of class warfare, that rails against the evil "1%" while seeking to redistribute the...
The conveniently timed release of a video taped in May and leaked by Mother Jones in September has the usual suspects in the mainstream media chattering that Mitt Romney's candidacy for president is now doomed.
Even if it is true, you just can't say that 47% of Americans are dependent on government and that they're hard to reach politically because of that.
In one clip, Romney describes how his campaign would not try to appeal to "47% of the people" who will vote for President Obama "no matter what."
They are, he says, "dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them."
No doubt there are people who are dependent on government due to circumstances beyond their control. But it's been a main thrust of this administration to make as many people dependent on government as possible — witness ObamaCare — and its motives haven't always been pure.
This is the administration from which comes a steady drumbeat of class warfare, that rails against the evil "1%" while seeking to redistribute the...
The Republican challenger speaks an uncomfortable truth — that it's hard enough to beat an incumbent president without almost half the electorate feeling dependent on him for some kind of government benefit.
The conveniently timed release of a video taped in May and leaked by Mother Jones in September has the usual suspects in the mainstream media chattering that Mitt Romney's candidacy for president is now doomed.
Even if it is true, you just can't say that 47% of Americans are dependent on government and that they're hard to reach politically because of that.
In one clip, Romney describes how his campaign would not try to appeal to "47% of the people" who will vote for President Obama "no matter what."
They are, he says, "dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them."
No doubt there are people who are dependent on government due to circumstances beyond their control. But it's been a main thrust of this administration to make as many people dependent on government as possible — witness ObamaCare — and its motives haven't always been pure.
This is the administration from which comes a steady drumbeat of class warfare, that rails against the evil "1%" while seeking to redistribute their wealth, that supports the mob action of Occupy Wall Street, attacks those preaching personal responsibility as asking people to "fend for themselves" and tells the people who roll up their sleeves rather than hold out their hands, well, "you didn't build that."
Romney did not dispute that many Americans need and deserve the benefits they get. He merely recognized the fact that it's hard to run against an administration that says electing Romney would place those benefits in jeopardy, an administration that raids Medicare of $700 billion to fund ObamaCare while its supporters run ads showing a Paul Ryan look-alike pushing granny over a cliff.
(more)The conveniently timed release of a video taped in May and leaked by Mother Jones in September has the usual suspects in the mainstream media chattering that Mitt Romney's candidacy for president is now doomed.
Even if it is true, you just can't say that 47% of Americans are dependent on government and that they're hard to reach politically because of that.
In one clip, Romney describes how his campaign would not try to appeal to "47% of the people" who will vote for President Obama "no matter what."
They are, he says, "dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them."
No doubt there are people who are dependent on government due to circumstances beyond their control. But it's been a main thrust of this administration to make as many people dependent on government as possible — witness ObamaCare — and its motives haven't always been pure.
This is the administration from which comes a steady drumbeat of class warfare, that rails against the evil "1%" while seeking to redistribute their wealth, that supports the mob action of Occupy Wall Street, attacks those preaching personal responsibility as asking people to "fend for themselves" and tells the people who roll up their sleeves rather than hold out their hands, well, "you didn't build that."
Romney did not dispute that many Americans need and deserve the benefits they get. He merely recognized the fact that it's hard to run against an administration that says electing Romney would place those benefits in jeopardy, an administration that raids Medicare of $700 billion to fund ObamaCare while its supporters run ads showing a Paul Ryan look-alike pushing granny over a cliff.
Dependence on Government vs. the American Dream
Posted By Alison Acosta Fraser On September 18, 2012 @ 5:39 pm In Entitlements | 23 Comments
Mother Jones has opened a broad debate about the role of government in our society.
In a clandestine tape recorded in May and obtained by the magazine, former Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) remarked that 47 percent of taxpayers pay no federal income taxes. He notes, among other things, the increase in dependency on government in the country.
This is not a widely held secret: 47 percent [1] of all tax filers paid no federal individual income taxes in 2009, and in 2011 that figure was 46 percent [2]. This is all perfectly legitimate as taxpayers take advantage of various credits, deductions, exemptions, and the like. These filers are largely (but not exclusively) low-income Americans including seniors and students.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that these taxpayers are dependent on the federal government. (More on that later.) But it does raise a crucial issue for our democracy: Who should pay to f...
Dependence on Government vs. the American Dream
Posted By Alison Acosta Fraser On September 18, 2012 @ 5:39 pm In Entitlements | 23 Comments
Mother Jones has opened a broad debate about the role of government in our society.
In a clandestine tape recorded in May and obtained by the magazine, former Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) remarked that 47 percent of taxpayers pay no federal income taxes. He notes, among other things, the increase in dependency on government in the country.
This is not a widely held secret: 47 percent [1] of all tax filers paid no federal individual income taxes in 2009, and in 2011 that figure was 46 percent [2]. This is all perfectly legitimate as taxpayers take advantage of various credits, deductions, exemptions, and the like. These filers are largely (but not exclusively) low-income Americans including seniors and students.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that these taxpayers are dependent on the federal government. (More on that later.) But it does raise a crucial issue for our democracy: Who should pay to fund the federal government?
Who Pays Taxes
At 47.4 percent of federal revenue, the federal income tax is by far the single largest source of revenue [3] for the federal government. The payroll tax is next largest, raising 35.6 percent. But those revenues are reserved for Social Security and Medicare benefits. So the individual income tax funds the bulk of operations of the federal government, including such core things as national defense, homeland security, and the judicial system.
Shouldn’t all Americans have some stake, even if just a nominal one, in funding these government programs? Should nearly 50 percent of Americans really be exempt from funding the most basic constitutional functions of government—along with education, food stamps, energy, welfare, foreign aid, veterans’ benefits, housing, and so forth?
Do the non-taxpayers represent those Americans who are dependent on government? Not necessarily, but there is overlap. Many take advantage of Washington policies that remove their liability or even send them money, via the IRS, that they never paid in to begin with. But to really understand government dependence requires looking at the full panoply of government programs and direct benefits.
Who’s Dependent on the Government
The 2012 Heritage Index of Dependence on Government [4] found that 63.7 million Americans received either Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Social Security, or support for higher education—an 8 percent increase over the previous year. These same people were very likely to receive other federal benefits, such as Medicare or food stamps. Separately, The Wall Street Journal found that in 2011, 49 percent [5] of Americans lived in a household where at least one member of the family received a government benefit.
So we find the nation at a tipping point. Nearly half of all taxpayers pay no income tax, while nearly half of all Americans receive direct government support for income, food, housing, medical care, school lunches, etc. This makes strong incentives for those who pay no income taxes to press for more and higher benefits. But government programs are rife with poor outcomes.
As Heritage scholar Robert Rector writes [6], “The federal government operates more than 80 means-tested welfare programs to provide cash, food, housing, medical care, and social services to poor and low-income people. Obama has increased federal means-tested welfare spending by a third since taking office. Last year, combined federal and state spending on means-tested welfare hit $927 billion.” Yet according to the Census Bureau, 15 percent of the population still lives in poverty.
Growing these dependency programs, as obama would do, will balloon the federal checkbook. Moreover, government dependency erodes human dignity and civil society. As Curtis Dubay writes, “the goal of government policy shouldn’t be to make more people dependent. It should be to maximize the ability of all Americans to make the greatest use of their abilities so they can lead meaningful, purposeful lives.”
Can We Afford This?
We reach this tipping point just as the nation struggles to confront our twin crises of spending and debt. The total national debt just surpassed $16 trillion [7]; total federal spending is projected to be nearly 23 percent of the economy in 2012; and, for the fourth year in a row, the federal government will run a deficit in excess of $1 trillion.
That’s just for starters. Nearly 78 million baby boomers are already starting to pour into Social Security and Medicare, while Medicaid is exploding [8]. Within just one generation, total federal spending will reach nearly 36 percent of GDP, and debt held by the public will reach nearly 200 percent of GDP.
This is unsustainable. But it is also economically and morally bankrupting. America is on the verge of becoming a nation in decline—economically stagnant and permanently debt-ridden, more dependent, and less self-governing.
Government should be smaller. Taxes should be flatter and should not penalize ordinary and low-income Americans for saving—whether for a car, a condo, or retirement. Federal dependency programs should be redesigned to not just assist low-income individuals, but also move them out of dependency. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid should be overhauled. The goal is to strengthen the safety net, not destroy it. The out-of-control growth of these programs virtually ensures their ultimate destruction, so we should act now.
These choices, while difficult, are not radical [9]: extending the means testing in Medicare today further to fix the program’s finances while also embracing premium support to improve health care delivery and outcomes; extending means testing in Social Security further (after all, do Bill Gates or Warren Buffett really need Social Security?); gradually moving Social Security away from a benefit for everyone to a benefit that, unlike today, guarantees that seniors won’t live in poverty because their benefits are so low.
Ah, Mother Jones, these are the kinds of solutions that will help in Saving the American Dream [10].
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I've never heard of a Republican doing that^.
God's real message is one word long -- LOVE. Somehow, man managed to find a way to distort one word into thousands of pages of discrepancy. Divine influence is a farce. It was an excuse for men with outdated philosophies to spread the strict lifestyle they wanted to instate to doctrine the world. If there is a true merciful, all-loving God, it is not the one in the Bible you have read about. It is the feeling of love God gave to all of us that binds us. Yes, even that friend of a friend of yours who may like someone of the same sex; it is our love for each that God wants us to share, it is more important than the color of our skin, our sexual orientation, our age, etc. That is the love God was talking about and that is the love that will save the world.
Do you think obama is not rich? Do you think Biden is not rich? Do you think Pelosi is not rich? Do you think Reid is not rich? Do you think Bill Gates is not rich? All of these Demoncrats are rich beyond our belief, but for some reason none of you mindless democrats consider their money as cause for concern.
You are right about only two partys left, but it isn't the Republicans attacking the middle class, it is the demoncrats. It won't take obama long to prove my point if the sorry example for a president gets re-elected.
frjm
And that is unfortunate, because it seems obvious that neo-feudalism explains the plutocracy and the activities in which it is engaged. You are, in my opinion, very, very correct that the middle class is deliberately being destroyed so that an educated and super-wealthy elite may rule unchallenged over dumbed-down, under-educated, peasant masses who will slave away at dead-end jobs for less than a living wage, mindlessly devoting all their labor, strength, health and energy to the bettering of the lifestyles of their corporate masters.
Wall Street Doubles Down On Obama (Wall Street Journal)
...and...
Wall Street investors 'preparing for an Obama victory' (CNBC)
...and...
Wall Street braces for an Obama win (Philadephia Inquirer)
What this means is that you and I are very far from alone. This is stronger even than the polling data showing Obama's lead over Rob-Me widening. How many times has Wall Street been wrong when calling the Election for President?
Never.
Wall Street has never been wrong.
Very much support your statement above ~ that remark makes it so obvious that [Romney] hasn't a clue about at least 1/2 of the people he wants to govern.
ANOTHER person, however, also responded to that comment ~ frjm ~ here. This person is not responding in a manner connoting basic knowledge of civility or mutual respect, and has therefore abandoned mature, adult, civilized discourse.
You comments sugget strongly that you are , SIMPLY, an idiot.
frjm
Thank you for your response to my comments.
I do not recall saying you were not entitled to speak your mind. I just pointed out that your comments were idioitic which renders you an idiot.
frjm
I support causes from both sides. I try to keep an open mind, which you don't seem to do. If you have read anything about me you know i have been around guns and was taught to use one when I was 12. I worked in law enforcement. I had things best in my life under Gerald Ford. Barbara Bush and Betty Ford are two of the people I admire most. I do not believe in abortion. I do not care for either candidate in this election. I'm sorry if that offends your beliefs, but it is who I am. Sorry you do not " get it". I do not know how to put it any clearer.
frjm AKA "Horn-in" here. Quote from your post; "I'm sorry if that offends your beliefs; I doubt that you are truly sorry that you may have offended someones beliefs, If you are sorry then your beliefs are questionable. Quote; Sorry you do not get it". Here again I doubt that you are sorry. I suggest you use the term to try and belittle your opponent because they are ,in your mind, to stupid to grasp the validity of your comments.
My quote; I'm not sorry for anything I say unless I am proven wrong". To say you sorry in an effort to make people feel good about your opposition to their thoughts or to belittle your opposition actually reflects on your inability to present a case. If you aren't proven wrong with legitimate facts that you have researched then stick by what you believe. I do not "fact check" anything because most of the "fact check" agencies are associated with the left. I do it the hard way, I actually research.
When Mitt made the 47% comment he was repeating information which was made public by the obama administration. In other words Romney was NOT WRONG!
Based on the current condition of America I cannot understand why anyone in their right mind would vote for obama again. Yes I know he continues to blame Bush for the current situation, but res...
frjm AKA "Horn-in" here. Quote from your post; "I'm sorry if that offends your beliefs; I doubt that you are truly sorry that you may have offended someones beliefs, If you are sorry then your beliefs are questionable. Quote; Sorry you do not get it". Here again I doubt that you are sorry. I suggest you use the term to try and belittle your opponent because they are ,in your mind, to stupid to grasp the validity of your comments.
My quote; I'm not sorry for anything I say unless I am proven wrong". To say you sorry in an effort to make people feel good about your opposition to their thoughts or to belittle your opposition actually reflects on your inability to present a case. If you aren't proven wrong with legitimate facts that you have researched then stick by what you believe. I do not "fact check" anything because most of the "fact check" agencies are associated with the left. I do it the hard way, I actually research.
When Mitt made the 47% comment he was repeating information which was made public by the obama administration. In other words Romney was NOT WRONG!
Based on the current condition of America I cannot understand why anyone in their right mind would vote for obama again. Yes I know he continues to blame Bush for the current situation, but rest assured, if he gets re-elected he will still be blaming Bush as America goes down in flames.
For the sake of America you better get excited about Romney because if obama gains another term we are doomed. A quick refresher; when obama took office gas was at $1.89 now it is between $4.00 and $6.00 dollars and his Czar for energy has stated he would like to see it at $8.00. The national debt was between 8 and 10 trillion which was accumulated over the past 235 years. Now the national debt is approaching 7 trillion more in four dollars for a total of 17 trillion. If obama gets reelected, economists speculate it will be around 26 Trillion at the end if his second term. Unemployment is at record highs and 47% of the public receive some form of government hand-out, oh but you already heard that. Jobs are being shipped over seas and obama has opened our southern border so more and more obama voters can enter.
If you aren't going to vote for Romney please stay at home. Obama has proven what his plan is for this nation. Question: Are You Better Off Now Then You Were Four Years Ago? My answer is HELL NO!!!! Sounds like a good OWS chant "Hell No obama must go" Kinda catchy.
frjm
I do a lot of research on my own. i read a lot and on all sides of issues, not just one or the other. I find it interesting that you brought up the issue of gasoline prices like the president sets them. I've never heard of one president who has done so. BTW, a neighbor of mine who works at Georgia Pacific, showed me some papers all of the employees of the plant received saying basically, if the president is relected, they would layoff a lot of their 50,000 employees and be forced to raise gas prices. There was also a personal letter from the president of the company saying they were telling them what party to vote for, but they shouldn't follow party lines. In this information was also a sheet of all demoratic candidates in our county with recommendations not to vote for them. Do you know who owns GP? Try the Coen brothers. I can't respect ANY candidate who backs this kind of thing by their biggest "supporter". As I have mentioned more than once, I have never voted a straight party line and never have I been threatened with...
I do a lot of research on my own. i read a lot and on all sides of issues, not just one or the other. I find it interesting that you brought up the issue of gasoline prices like the president sets them. I've never heard of one president who has done so. BTW, a neighbor of mine who works at Georgia Pacific, showed me some papers all of the employees of the plant received saying basically, if the president is relected, they would layoff a lot of their 50,000 employees and be forced to raise gas prices. There was also a personal letter from the president of the company saying they were telling them what party to vote for, but they shouldn't follow party lines. In this information was also a sheet of all demoratic candidates in our county with recommendations not to vote for them. Do you know who owns GP? Try the Coen brothers. I can't respect ANY candidate who backs this kind of thing by their biggest "supporter". As I have mentioned more than once, I have never voted a straight party line and never have I been threatened with my job should I not. That's all this stuff is - a threat! GP is the largest employer in our county. You your Bounty, Sparkle, AngelSoft and other products to our workers who make those products. GP also owns a lot of forested areas of our county - actually they are the largest land owners, too. DO you seriously think there isn't fear of what they'll do? We only have a total population of 70,000 for our entire county. This iis the kind of thing I do for my research. See it for myself!!
Once again, I am very sorry that you feel I think things like this as so wrong. I have never said I support our president when has run - and I still don't - but I believe Mr Romney is the much larger threat after seeing so many things that he and his supports have done. And yes, it may be true, but he implied that those on SS don't pay taxes - and my husband I do. That is what ticked me off about it. We were taxed when we first paid from our saleries, and now a second time when receive it.
I would hope you could try to understand how I feel. I am through with a lot of this because you will never change your mind and I have no idea what i am going to end up doing. I have to see what is going to happen between now and the election.
And yes, i am truly soorry that - to me - you seem to be attacking me personally rather than the subect. By saying what you believe is my mind is why I think so. And I'm truly sorry someone doesn't believe me when I give my opinions enough to call me a liar. I even prayed for her in church that she can see how she needs to not be so mean, rude, and hateful to do such a thing.