On Thursday, July 12th, after addressing a group from the NAACP, presidential-hopeful Mitt Romney made the following stunning statement:
"If you’re looking for free stuff you don't have to pay for? Vote for the other guy, that's what he';s all about, okay? That's not, that's not what I'm about."
1. That statement is grossly offensive.
2. He's dead wrong. He
is the guy who's
all about giving away free stuff ... to millionaires and billionaires!
Welfare for the Wealthy costs this country trillions of dollars a year, both in government handouts to Mitt Romney and his wealthy elite friends, and subsidies paid to billion dollar corporations and industries. Mitt Romney is actually asking us to elect him, in part, precisely because he wants to further increase the Welfare payments the wealthy are already receiving.
Follow us below the squiggly to see how deeply conservative Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) described this affront in his scathing report titled, "Subsidies of the Rich & Famous," when he appears to have either gotten a pang of conscience or went off-script (emphasis ours):
The government safety net has been cast far and wide, with almost half of all American households now receiving some form of government assistance. But most taxpayers will be asking why when they learn who is receiving what.
From tax write-offs for gambling losses, vacation homes, and luxury yachts to subsidies for their ranches and estates, the government is subsidizing the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Multimillionaires are even receiving government checks for not working. This welfare for the well-off – costing billions of dollars a year – is being paid for with the taxes of the less fortunate, many who are working two jobs just to make ends meet, and IOUs to be paid off by future generations.
This is not an accidental loophole in the law. To the contrary, this reverse Robin Hood style of wealth redistribution is an intentional effort to get all Americans bought into a system where everyone appears to benefit. ...
Got that? Mitt Romney and his fellow Republicans who are touting his tax scheme are
intentionally deceiving you into thinking that
Welfare for the Wealthy benefits everyone.
It does not. Tom Coburn again:
The government’s social safety net, which has long existed to catch those who are down and help them get back up, is now being used as a hammock by some millionaires, some who are paying less taxes than average middle class families. Comprehensive information on the full range of government benefits enjoyed by millionaires has never been collected previously. This report provides the first such compilation. What it reveals is sheer Washington stupidity with government policies pampering the wealthy costing taxpayers billions of dollars every year.
This is a partial list of the largesse that
Senator Coburn is calling Welfare for the Wealthy*, and that Mitt Romney wants to force the rest of us to keep doling out:
- $74 million in unemployment checks to people who report an AGI of at least $1,000,000 in the same year they collect those benefits.
- $21 billion in gambling losses.
- $9 billion in Social Security Retirement Benefits.
- $316 million in farm subsidies.
- $89 million for preservation of ranches and estates.
- $75.6 million in residential energy tax credits.
- $18.15 million in child care tax credits.
- $7.5 million to compensate for damages caused by emergencies to property that should have been insured.
So our political leaders need to start calling this what it is every time they open their mouths to talk about it, and so do you.
It isn't "tax breaks" for the wealthy, it's Welfare for the Wealthy.
And it needs to stop. It's unconscionable that we as a country should have to bathe the already super rich with billions of taxpayer dollars. They don't need Welfare and if we want to thrive as a nation and put a dent in our debt, these Wealthy Welfare Kings need to let go of the government apron strings and learn how to support themselves on their own income and stop taking ours away from us (because that's what taxes are: the country's income for doing the job that we hire it to do).
"The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People's Money out of their Pockets, tho' only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors' Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell'd to pay by some Law
"All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it." ~ Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father
*If you have an issue with the inclusion of any of the items on this list as "Welfare for the Wealthy," take it up with Tom Coburn, who classified them as such — we may or may not agree.
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