With 144 million American adults paying no income tax and record numbers receiving public assistance, a Florida-based group is exposing the creeping welfare state.
A new Government Gone Wild video, obtained by Sunshine State News in advance of its release Friday, asks:
You want to see something really disturbing? Go to any search engine and start typing in the words, How do I qualify and this is what pops up:Food Stamps, Medicaid, unemployment, earned income credit, Section 8, disability, Pell Grant, Medicare, FHA loan.
"These are the top things people are searching for on the Internet today and every one of these involves getting something from the government," video narrator Blaise Ingoglia says in "Land of the Freebies, Home of the Enslaved."
Countering Occupy Wall Street protesters who target the top 1 percent of income earners in Americans, GGW is waging a sort of reverse class warfare -- decrying the steady growth of an unproductive or government-dependent underclass.
The GGW video notes:
- One out of three Americans lives in a household that receives Food Stamps, subsidized housing, cash welfare or Medicaid.
- Forty-one percent of all U.S. births and 60 percent of elderly long-term care are paid for by government.
While these numbers are rising, the percentage of people actually paying federal income taxes continues to decline. According to GGW:
- During Ronald Reagans presidency, only 19 percent of U.S. households paid no taxes.
- Under President Bill Clinton, that number grew to 25 percent, and 30 percent under President George W. Bush.
- Today, under President Barack Obama, 47 percent of households -- approximately 144 million Americans -- pay zero in federal income taxes.
Some of this is a function of the prolonged economic slump that has seen unemployment rates hover stubbornly around 9 percent for the past three years. Some of it owes to an unhealthy combination of "progressive" tax policies and unprecedented federal spending on entitlement programs.
Radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh has picked up on the trends. Citing the oft-publicized 47 percent nontaxpayer figure, the conservative commentator has begun to brand Democrats the party of "do-nothing voters."
"The Democrat Party has cast aside the white working class," he said this week.
The New York Times revealed as much Sunday, reporting, Preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class.
"All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment -- professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists -- and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.
By contrast, several Republican presidential candidates have proposed a flat-tax schedule to ensure an equitable, sustainable tax base.
U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, a former federal tax attorney, has called for reforming the tax code to include a provision that would require all Americans to pay some level of income tax.
"Even if it's only the cost of two Happy Meals," she said at a recent GOP debate.
As for the steady growth in government benefits, GGW says the federal government is unabashedly expanding the welfare state. The Obama administration, it relates, recently awarded a $5 million grant to Oregon for expanding that state's rolls of Food Stamp "clients."
Since 2008, Oregon's Food Stamp participation has swelled 60 percent to 780,000 recipients (one out of every five Oregonians).
And just in case there is any lingering stigma to taking Food Stamps, GGW observes that the program's name has been euphemized to SNAP -- Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Ingoglia, who launched GGW in 2007 to address local issues in and around Hernando County, took his video project national in recent months and has since attracted 6 million views on YouTube.
"The small-government message is the best message out there. The challenge is in marketing that message, and we're trying to do that by breaking down complex subjects into 3 1/2-minute videos," said Ingoglia, who chairs the Hernando County Republican Party and was elected vice chairman of the Republican Party of Florida in September.
Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
