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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (26701)	3/2/2010 12:06:23 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

Gov't Dependents: The New Majority Posted 06:37 PM ET Welfare State: A major newspaper looks at the data and finds that Americans have become more dependent on government than at any time since the Depression. Something's gone terribly wrong in our country. We Americans pride ourselves on our independence. Our nation's founding document even uses that in its title — the Declaration of Independence. But this spirit is fading with each new year, each new state and federal program, each new unkeepable promise made to a growing throng of citizens looking to government — not their own abilities, savvy, learning and hard work — to get by in life. A Washington Times report underscores this shift. Last year, "for the first time since the Great Depression, Americans took more aid from the government than they paid in taxes," it has determined. Transfer payments — unemployment, Social Security, food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare and other forms of government welfare — grew $231 billion last year to just over $2.1 trillion. Meanwhile, individual taxes shrank $325 billion to $2.1 trillion, slightly less (before rounding) than transfer payments. Let that sink in for a moment: We, as a people, are taking more in welfare than we're paying in taxes. There are reasons for this, of course. For one, more than 8 million people have lost jobs in the recession and are no longer paying taxes. That hurts. And many are on unemployment and other government programs. Also, some who've lost their jobs are jumping straight into retirement. Those aged 62 going on Social Security climbed a record 19% last year. The temptation is to write off all this as a fluke, a recession-based aberration. But the trend has been in place for years. The Heritage Foundation tracks annual changes in the use of government services and entitlements. Its yearly report creates a "dependency index" that gauges just how much we lean on government for our well-being. In 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, the index stood at 238 — compared with a starting value of 100 in 1980. That means our dependency on government has grown 138% since the year before Reagan became president. Later this week the 2009 report comes out — and it may show a still higher number. So much for the idea that "the era of big government is over," as President Clinton put it back in 1996. In fact, big government has come back with a frightening vengeance. Economist Gary Shilling has his own dependence gauge. His most recent report, in 2007, showed that 52.6% of Americans got "significant income" from government. Seven years earlier, it was "just" 49.4%. In 1950, it was 28.3%. This makes today's debate over the government's takeover of health care — one-sixth of the economy — and other key industries, such as autos and banking, all the more urgent. With $45 trillion in planned spending over the next decade, the U.S. will soon look more like one of the fiscally bloated, economically sclerotic members of the European Union than the America that has for a century been the world's economic trailblazer. The further we move away from a market economy and toward government control, the more dependent we and our children will become.