Weekend Reading – Government Aids

Ki Gulbranson owns a logo apparel shop, deals in jewelry on the side and referees youth soccer games. He makes about $39,000 a year and wants you to know that he does not need any help from the federal government.  He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. He supports politicians who promise to cut government spending. In 2010, he printed T-shirts for the Tea Party campaign of a neighbor, Chip Cravaack, who ousted this region's long-serving Democratic congressman.

Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice.

In recent years Gulbranson has earned so little that he did not pay federal income taxes, although he still paid thousands of dollars toward Medicare and Social Security. The earned-income tax credit is intended to offset those payroll taxes, to encourage people with lower-paying jobs to remain in the work force.

The times goes on to point out (many pages, polls, charts, statistics) what a crisis we are approaching right here in America as the Middle Class now receives 69% more Government assistance they it did in 2000 and the bottom 20% – our nation's poorest 5th (including many retired parents living on SS) have seen their share of Government aid DROP from 54% to 36% – at the time when they need it the most.  Meanwhile, our entitlement costs are climbing and chewing up more and more of the Federal Funds while the "solution" of the GOP is to put less money in and see if we can collapse the system…