I am the 50.5 percent.
I am, according to the Heritage Foundation, part of the lucky half of Americans who pay federal income taxes, so that the other half (technically the remaining 49.5 percent) can pay nothing.
Half of us are paying the whole bill. Somehow that doesn’t seem fair. Folks like Elizabeth Warren and President Barack Obama agree. They think we should pay more.
We’re used to that, we 50.5 percenters. Every time a new “stimulus” is announced, every time a new government program to solve all our problems is rolled out, we know that a) the problems aren’t going anywhere; and b) we’ll be stuck paying the check.
And every time there’s talk of a tax “cut” or a “rebate,” we assume it will be set up so that, somehow, the people who actually pay in get left out.
But what can you do, right? If you’re a 50.5 percenter you just get up, go to work, try to take care of your family and hope that someone, somewhere in Washington or on Beacon Hill is getting your back.
They’re not.
Why should they? We’re barely half of the population. Politicians count votes — not pay stubs.
Back in the evil days of Ronald Reagan, a mere 15 percent of the population didn’t pay taxes (or in the case of children, were claimed as a dependent by a taxpayer). Back then, we had lower rates and more payers. More people in the ship of state together, sharing in the rowing. We working taxpayers mattered.
Today, thanks to the “food stamp president,” as Newt Gingrich calls him, the number of non-payers is 300 percent bigger, and a record number of Americans, one in five, now receives some level of federal government assistance.
And no, my overpaid friends in the Patrick administration, that doesn’t include government workers.
Yes, all American workers pay payroll taxes, but those are for your Social Security and Medicare benefits (remember Al Gore’s “lockbox”). But Social Security’s been in the red since 2009, so we 50.5 percenters have been picking up that tab, too.
There’s a terrifying chart in the president’s new budget showing that, under Obama’s proposed spending plan, federal debt will reach $200,000 per U.S. household by 2020.
Numbers like that simply aren’t sustainable.
By 2020, we’ll be paying more on national debt service than on national defense — and the debt will still be growing.
So why aren’t people panicking? Why aren’t voters demanding serious spending cuts and tax reform?
Once again, why would they?
The half of Americans eating the pie know that they’re not paying for it. In reality, that debt burden is $400,000 per 50.5 percenter household and zero — nada, goose egg, zippo — for the rest.
The president proposes to make the tax system more “fair.” But “fair” in the Liz Warren sense of the word. He wants to raise income taxes, dividend taxes, Medicare taxes, etc. on families earning $250,000 a year — and already paying most of the federal tax bill.
This is the same budget that promises soaring deficits for years to come. In other words, Obama isn’t raising taxes to pay down debt. He’s collecting it from the 50.5 percenters to “share” with the rest.
Do you want to live in an America where the takers outnumber the makers?
Is a nation where 51 percent freeload off the 49 percent still really America?
And is that a country you want to live in?
Because if we re-elect President Obama, that’s exactly the country we’ll have.
Springing Forward
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