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Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Does Romney think disabled veterans are "victims" too?

UPDATE
Fact Check: Mitt Romney's '47 Percent' Claims Wildly Inaccurate
The Huffington Post
By Bonnie Kavoussi
Posted: 09/18/2012

It is true that 46 percent of American households did not pay federal income taxes last year, according to the Tax Policy Center. But that number is unusually high, in part because of the recession -- and a majority of that 46 percent still paid payroll taxes. Only 18 percent of American households paid no income taxes and no payroll taxes last year. It is largely low-income seniors and very poor people that legally don't pay federal income taxes or payroll taxes, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Tax Policy Center.

It was also inaccurate for Romney to claim that those who don't pay federal income taxes would vote for President Obama "no matter what." Nearly all states with a high percentage of Americans that don't pay federal income taxes vote Republican in presidential elections, according to the Washington Post.
read more here
Does Romney know disabled veterans do not pay income tax for what they get from the Federal Government? After all, while some politicians say VA compensation is an "entitlement" this is something they paid for when they became disabled serving this nation. Some are receiving Social Security benefits, Medicare and Medicaid, also other "entitlements" they paid for. Then again, considering when he was Governor of Massachusetts, he cut state programs for veterans topped off with ending the hiring preferences they had been given for serving this nation, so it is very unlikely he thought much about them at all.

Does he know his list of "victims" also include working folks that do pay income taxes every week but make so little money they get most of it back in a tax refund?

Controversial private fund-raiser video shows candid Romney
Posted by
CNN Political Unit

(CNN) – Mitt Romney on Monday said his controversial statements caught on tape were "off the cuff" and "not elegantly stated," but he defended the main message of his remarks.

Romney took three questions in a brief press conference with pool reporters late Monday night in California, scheduled at the last minute in response to the release of secretly recorded video of the candidate speaking at a private fund-raiser in May.

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what," Romney says in one clip. "There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent on government, who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them. Who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing."


The non-partisan Tax Policy Center estimates that for tax year 2011, 46% of households will end up owing nothing in federal income taxes. But if payroll taxes are counted, the number of non-payer households drops precipitously - to an estimated 18% in 2011.
read more here


Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Romney Budget Proposals Would Require Massive Cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Other Programs

PDF of this report (16pp.)
By Richard Kogan and Paul N. Van de Water
Revised May 21, 2012
RELATED AREAS OF RESEARCH
Budget — Federal
Congressional Action
Deficits and Projections
Process
Food Assistance
Food Stamps
Health
Health Reform
Insurance Coverage
Medicaid
Medicare
Tax — Federal
2001/2003 Tax Cuts
Alternative Minimum Tax
Individuals and Families
Other Issues
Taxes and the Economy


Governor Mitt Romney’s proposals to cap total federal spending, boost defense spending, cut taxes, and balance the budget would require extraordinarily large cuts in other programs, both entitlements and discretionary programs, according to our revised analysis based on new information and updated projections.

For the most part, Governor Romney has not outlined cuts in specific programs. But if policymakers exempted Social Security from the cuts, as Romney has suggested, and cut Medicare, Medicaid, and all other entitlement and discretionary programs by the same percentage — to meet Romney’s spending cap, defense spending target, and balanced budget requirement — then non-defense programs other than Social Security would have to be cut 29 percent in 2016 and 59 percent in 2022 (see Figure 1). Without the balanced budget requirement, the cuts would be smaller but still massive, reaching 40 percent in 2022.

The cuts that would be required under the Romney budget proposals in programs such as veterans’ disability compensation, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for poor elderly and disabled individuals, SNAP (formerly food stamps), and child nutrition programs would move millions of households below the poverty line or drive them deeper into poverty. The cuts in Medicare and Medicaid would make health insurance unaffordable (or unavailable) to tens of millions of people. The cuts in non-defense discretionary programs — a spending category that covers a wide variety of public services such as elementary and secondary education, law enforcement, veterans’ health care, environmental protection, and biomedical research — would come on top of the deep cuts in this part of the budget that are already in law due to the discretionary funding caps established in last year’s Budget Control Act (BCA).

Compensation payments for disabled veterans (which average less than $13,000 a year) would be cut by more than one-fourth, as would pensions for low-income veterans (which average about $11,000 a year) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits for poor aged and disabled individuals (which average about $6,000 a year and leave poor elderly and disabled people well below the poverty line).
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