THE PUBLIC POLICY: Tax Credit Welfare
Macomber, Shawn
THE PUBLIC POLICY, Shawn Macomber Tax Credit Welfare N GEORGE ORWELL'S 1984, the authoritarian rulers of Oceania evaded the general population's distaste for certain policies by simply...
...That same year the federal government spent only $21 billion on traditional welfare services...
...It's an achievement Democrats have not stopped braying over ever since, although it clearly was more the brainchild of Newt Gingrich than Bill Clinton...
...It has just been adapted to the times, gradually morphing into a more virulent strain...
...Change the word and you change the debate...
...Democrats and liberal Republicans have no intention of supporting "welfare" again...
...poor with a religiosity that is completely out of character...
...dare confront-the Internal Revenue Service...
...On the face of things such rhetoric seems ineffective...
...Enough of these charades...
...It is ironic that Bush and Kerry campaigned as scions of fiscal responsibility while both simultaneously endorsed a plan that "refunds" billions upon billions of dollars to non-taxpayers...
...In 2002, for example, the IRS sent out a combined $58 billion in "tax 40 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR April 2005 SHAWN M A C O M B E R refunds" to families through the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC) programs...
...Since 15 percent of her income over $10,750 is more than the remainder of her tax credit ($938/$800), she takes home the $800 as a "refund...
...This tactic has been on display in recent years during the welfare debate...
...It's a trend that is accelerating...
...For example, one Bush/Cheney television spot during the 2004 campaign intoned that John Kerry "opposed increasing the child tax credit 18 times...
...Shawn Macomber is a reporter and stafwriterforThe American Spectator...
...This makes me wonder how many other tax breaks low-income taxpayers qualify for but don't claim because they aren't aware of them...
...The language left was "deliberately constructed for political purposes: words, that is to say, which not only had in every case a political implication, but were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them...
...Instead they have adopted the successful rhetoric of devotees of limited government, and used it for the exact opposite purpose...
...Democrats hold an advantage in most polls vis-avis public perception of which party is fighting for the working class, but it isn't working for them in terms of obtaining and expanding real political power...
...The statist elements of the government simply eliminated the offending words and continued the long march towards the utopian collective, the founding principle of which has always been and shall always remain the redistribution of wealth...
...This redistribution of wealth is run under the auspices of "family tax credits" that are named in such a way that no politician planning to seek re-election would ever dare publicly question...
...Kerry's campaign trail claim that "the burden of taxes has shifted from the wealthy to the middle class" did not deliver the November election...
...Put another way, change the word and you change the debate...
...Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, recently elected DNC Chair Howard Dean, and John Edwards have all continued to recite the mantra of rich vs...
...Either we are still in the business of welfare, or we are not...
...Even with an increase, protesters still showed up at the White House pushing symbolic baby strollers...
...Likewise, the CTC started off in the mid-'90s as a $400 credit, before jumping up to $1,000 as part of the congressional deal to make President Bush's first term tax cuts a reality...
...Consider: Despite the utter failure of (still just a) Senator John Kerry's apocalyptic campaign rhetoric about "tax cuts for the wealthy," Democrats have been unwilling to drop the language of class warfare...
...Some liberal think tanks began advocating free tax Republican senators Chuck Grassley and Olympia Snowe have gone even further, demanding that the IRS seek out those families that don't take advantage of these credits...
...April 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 41...
...They were just cloaked in "newspeak...
...The "Two Americas" speech did not carry the day for Edwards in the primaries...
...The EITC was enacted in 1975 and remained a very small program doling out a couple hundred dollars to offset Social Security taxes for the poor, before suddenly skyrocketing into the thousands in the early'90s...
...The couple's EITC is $1,350 for a grand total of $4,088...
...Class warfare, however, still sells...
...Here's another wholly fictional case run through the official IRS "refund" calculators: John and Joanne, a married couple with three children, earned a combined total of $29,000 last year...
...If the only way the forces of Big Government statism can win the debate is with a smoke and mirror campaign of "newspeak" and artful dodges, perhaps it is time they face a real opposition, rather than a conservative movement that fought welfare to the death only to bow before flowery language and innuendo...
...It is one thing to complain about "welfare queens," but quite another thing altogether to argue against the Child Tax Credit...
...Not only is that a $4,088 government subsidy for John and Joanne, it's also the rough equivalent of a 14 percent pay raise for 2004...
...THE PUBLIC P O L I C Y SHAWN M A C O M B E R Tax Credit Welfare N GEORGE ORWELL'S 1984, the authoritarian rulers of Oceania evaded the general population's distaste for certain policies by simply "eliminating undesirable words" and "stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever...
...Shortly after the announcement that the CTC would remain at $1,000 for 2004 instead of dropping to $700 as planned, the liberal advocacy group Citizens for Tax Justice issued a dire press release headlined, "Bush Tax Plan's Child Credit Boost Leaves Behind One in Four of America's Children...
...ONSERVATIVE EAGERNESS TO SURRENDER when debate over family tax credits comes up has only emboldened the opposition to push hard er...
...More than a decade ago, President Bill Clinton and Congress came together "to end welfare as we know it...
...While conservatives such as Americans for Tax Reform's Grover Norquist and the Cato Institute's Doug Bandow have appropriately questioned the logic of "tax cuts" for people who do not pay taxes, Republican politicians have heartily embraced the idea and even attempted to claim it as their own...
...Yet the core philosophies that drove a failed and unpopular social experiment in the first place were never abandoned...
...The percentage recipients can receive in cash over and above their tax liability was also increased from 10 to 15 percent during those negotiations...
...return consultations for "the poor" (almost everyone is poor in theirbooks) to make sure theygot everygovernment dollar coming to them...
...The IRS forgot the `service' part of its name and mission," Grassley said, adding, "It's a waste to have tax credits a lot of people miss...
...This is combined with an EITC of $2,120 for a total refund of $2,920 to a taxpayer who paid in zero tax dollars...
...The IRS needs to do a lot better job of spotting oversights in the taxpayers' favor...
...The ad was in effect criticizing the Massachusetts senator for not being a big enough booster of the welfare state...
...Here's how it works: If Jane, a single mother with one dependent child, earned $17,000 last year and owes $200 in taxes, her $1,000 CTC eliminates all of her tax liability with $800 left over...
...This was not how these programs were intended to function...
...Now they argue in self-righteous tones for "tax cuts for the working class"-in other words, tax cuts for people who don't pay taxes...
...Through various standard deductions, the couple's tax bill begins at zero...
...Proponents of family tax credits often wax philosophical about the "moral imperative" of providing such "relief...
...These large returns have essentially become government subsidies to individuals or welfare recipients, laundered through the one organization few in Washington, D.C...
...They can claim a CTC of $3,000, but only take home the lesser amount of 15 percent of their income over $10,750, which is $2,738...
...This tactic has been on display in recent years during the welfare debate...
Vol. 38 • April 2005 • No. 3
