BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
sen marco rubio r tb FL is going to run for president in 2016. He has started his campaign of deception, manipulation, fear and hate, showing just what kind of presidency his would be. A Christian, yet he can't seem to run on the principles of his faith, I wounder why? Here he is attacking the poor and the social safety net they so desperately need, while saying nothing about federal corporate welfare that allows executives to keep their obscene pay packages while their companies receive tax breaks and government subsidies paid for by the 99%. This from +PolitiFact .....
"If people work and make more money, they lose more in benefits than they would earn in salary."
— Marco Rubio on Tuesday, January 13th, 2015 in his book, "American Dreams"
Marco Rubio in new book: People on welfare 'lose more in benefits than they would earn in salary'
By Steve Contorno on Wednesday, January 14th, 2015 at 11:56 a.m.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., released a new book, "American Dreams," on Tuesday, Jan. 13.
At the center of Sen. Marco Rubio’s new book, American Dreams, is the conservative idea that government stands in the way of lower- and middle-class Americans getting ahead.
Why don’t more Americans start small businesses? Government
regulation, Rubio says. Why do Americans pay so much for higher
education? Government subsidies for students drive up prices. Why don’t
low-income workers try to work more hours or strive for a promotion?
Government assistance disincentivizes it.
"If (low-income) people work and make more money, they lose more in
benefits than they would earn in salary," Rubio wrote in the book,
released Jan. 13.
This idea is at the heart of Rubio’s plan to tackle poverty, so it’s one we wanted to look at in depth. Welfare vs. work
Government benefits for low-income individuals and families come in
many forms: housing assistance, health care and money to purchase food,
among others. Additionally, some states provide further assistance with
local programs.
These programs, reserved for poor people, tend toramp down as income goes up, meaning the more money you make, the fewer benefits you receive. Makes sense.
That phasedown, though, creates cliffs that sometime lessen the value
of the increase in earnings. A similar effect occurs when people move
into a higher tax bracket as their income goes up.
Economists look at these changes in benefits and tax rates in terms
of their impact on every additional dollar earned. When the impact is
high, and a large chunk of the amount of every additional dollar earned
goes to taxes or to offset a decrease in benefits, it can affect
people’s desire to work more, said the Congressional Budget Office, the
chief fiscal scorekeeper for lawmakers. This situation becomes an
incentive for people "already in the workforce to put in fewer hours or
be less productive," the CBO said.
Is it possible that the benefits lost could be so great, that a
person would lose more in benefits than they would gain by an increase
in wages?
Sure. The Cato Institute, a libertarian policy shop, released a study
in 2013 that made this exact point. By analyzing the total benefits an
individual can receive in each state and from the federal government,
they determined that in nine states assistance payouts exceeded $35,000 a
year. Welfare paid better than a minimum wage job in 34 states, plus
the District of Columbia, they reported. We asked Rubio’s office for
more evidence, and we didn’t hear back.
Under such a scenario, an individual could lose more by working than staying in their current situation. ‘Typical’ low-income family
But what is that situation? To reach its headline-grabbing
conclusions, Cato claims it focused on a typical welfare family. But the
study focused on what a single mother with two children might qualify
for.
That’s an important distinction, and one that significantly alters
the playing field. Single mothers with multiple children are eligible
for considerably more benefits than poor individuals or married couples
with no children.
The report goes on to assume that the "typical" family receives seven
different forms of public assistance, but that assumption is a pretty
big leap. Here’s why:
There are four main federal programs: Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (food stamps); Medicaid or Child Health Insurance
Program (health care); Section 8 (housing assistance); and Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (welfare). According to the Congressional
Budget Office in 2012, most families do not receive assistance from more
than one of these programs.
In fact, just a quarter of single parents with children earning up to
250 percent of the federal poverty line are enrolled in two of those
programs. About 11 percent are enrolled in three or four.
If we look at all low-income households of every size and makeup,
then 17 percent of low-income households are enrolled in multiple
federal programs and only 1 percent receive benefits from all four of
them.
So choosing to look at a single mother receiving benefits from seven programs, as Cato does, is an extreme example.
Also, there are two widely used programs, the Earned Income Tax
Credit and the Child Tax Credit, that actually increase benefits for
very low-income individuals the more money that they make for their
first $10,000 in wages. The benefits then ramp down after someone earns
about $17,000 annually. This incentivizes and rewards poor parents who
work more, and therefore it actually decreases the marginal tax rate for
many low-income workers.
In part because of these two tax credits, it is quite uncommon that
someone would go from not working to working and lose more in benefits
than they would gain in income. ‘Possible but rare’
Let’s go back to looking at this issue in terms of income lost on
additional earnings. According to the Congressional Budget Office, there
are very few instances when all 100 cents of an additional dollar
earned would go to taxes and replacing lost benefits. In fact, among
low- and moderate-income taxpayers, less than one percent lose 80 cents or more of every additional dollar earned.
Those most affected would likely be individuals who earn near or just
above the poverty level (about $20,000 in a three-person household),
who are also enrolled in multiple benefit programs that are set to phase
out with any additional income. This is not the norm.
Most people earning at or near the poverty level lose about 30 percent in taxes and offset benefits on their additional income.
Losing 100 percent of every dollar earned to taxes or replacing lost
benefits is "possible but rare," said Eugene Steuerle at the Urban
Institute. "High 40 to 60 percent rates are more common, and, if one
adds in cost of transportation and clothing (not a tax but a loss from
working), higher still."
It’s difficult to know when or how people factor lost benefits in
their employment decisions, the Congressional Budget Office said.
Benefits from government assistance programs are complex and determined
by a multitude of factors, both financial (like salary, enrollment in
other assistance programs) and nonfinancial (marital status, number of
children). It would be hard for an individual to decide if working an
extra few hours a week or taking that promotion is going to impact their
benefits. Our ruling
In his book, Rubio wrote, "If people work and make more money, they lose more in benefits than they would earn in salary."
There is evidence that when a large chunk of the amount of every
additional dollar earned goes to taxes or to offset a decrease in
benefits, people work less. Further, there are scenarios where a
low-income individual with children receiving assistance from the
government through multiple programs could potentially lose more in
benefits than he or shewould gain by a slight or modest increase in income.
But these examples are a small minority. The vast majority of people
face some higher taxes and lost benefits when they make more money, but
they would still take home more in pay than they would under a lower
salary.
The statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical
facts that would leave a different impression. We rate the statement
Mostly False.
Marco Rubio, American Dreams, Jan. 13, 2014
Cato Institute, "The Work Versus Welfare Tradeoff: 2013," 2013
Cato Institute, "Welfare: A Better Deal than Work," Aug. 21, 2013
Congressional Budget Office, "Effective Marginal Tax Rates for Low- and Moderate-Income Workers," November 2012
Congressional Budget Office, "Snapshot of Marginal Tax Rates for Low- and Moderate-Income Workers," Oct. 23, 2013
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "Policymakers Often Overstate
Marginal Tax Rates for Lower-Income Workers and Gloss Over Tough
Trade-Offs in Reducing Them," Dec. 3, 2014
Email interview with LaDonna Pavetti, vice president, Family Income
Support at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Jan. 8, 2015
Eugene Steuerle, Institute Fellow and Richard B. Fisher Chair at the Urban Institute, Jan. 12, 2015
MORE lies and propaganda from the gop / tea-bagger convention in Tampa, this time spewing from the mouth of that consummate liar rick santorum. He, like rep paul ryan, is a Catholic, and so I have to ask the same question; that is, when rick santorum goes to confession will he list these lies among his sins?
The Truth-O-Meter Says:
When his grandfather arrived in the United States, "there were no government benefits for immigrants."
Rick Santorum on Tuesday, August 28th, 2012 in a speech at the Republican National Convention in Tampa
Rick Santorum says that when his grandfather arrived in the U.S., “there were no government benefits for immigrants"
Former Sen. Rick Santorum speaks at the Republican National Convention in Tampa.
During a speech to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, former
presidential candidate Rick Santorum evoked the America his father found
when he arrived on these shores as an immigrant in the 1920s.
"In 1923, there were no government benefits for immigrants, except one: Freedom!" Santorum said.
So we will re-evaluate it here, though we won’t consider the issue of
"freedom," which we believe is too vague to be fact-checked.
When we first looked at this question, we found there were two major
sources of payments to individuals prior to 1925 -- veterans benefits
and workers' compensation.
Veterans benefits. The federal government began
funding benefits for Civil War veterans in 1862, initially for those who
had been injured and then, progressively, to wider and wider groups of
those who had served. In 1904 President Theodore Roosevelt signed an
order defining "disability" to include old age, as long as the
beneficiary had at least 90 days of service and an honorable discharge.
University of Arizona economist Price V. Fishback wrote that "roughly
40 to 48 percent of the elderly in the North and Midwest in the early
1900s were receiving pensions" through the system. Peter Blanck and Chen
Song wrote in a 2003 paper in the William and Mary Law Review that "at
its height in the 1890s, the (Union veteran) pension scheme consumed
almost half of the federal budget and was intimately linked to the
Republican Party's strategy to maintain the soldier vote and hold the
White House."
Worker compensation. A federal worker-compensation law
to help civilian government workers injured or made sick on the job was
adopted in 1908, according to a history on the Social Security
Administration website. Starting in 1911, states began passing such
laws, and by 1929, laws were in effect in all but four states.
While these are the clearest examples that run counter to Santorum’s claim, there are a few other efforts worth noting.
Local government aid to the poor. During the period
Santorum is talking about, local governments were responsible for
providing benefits to the poor, Fishback told PolitiFact. These payments
tended to be modest. Fishback cited a study by Brendan Livingston of
Rowan University that looked at welfare policies in Massachusetts --
generally considered the most generous state in the first decades of the
20th century -- and found that local governments were spending an
amount equivalent to about 0.5 percent to 1 percent of all income earned
by state residents on relief for the poor. Private charities were
spending at about twice that rate.
By 1925, most states also had "mothers' pensions" on the books, which
allowed widows to raise their children without having to put them in
orphanages, according to Fishback’s paper. By then, a handful of states
also had means-tested pensions for the elderly, and a sizable number had
pensions for the blind. And states or municipalities often operated
mental hospitals, old-age homes, orphanages and general hospitals, all
for the public benefit.
Schools and universities. While education isn’t a
direct payment to individuals, it’s worth pointing out that they
represented a government-provided benefit in kind. "Primary and
secondary education were already overwhelmingly paid for by taxes from
the late 1800s on," said Peter Lindert, an economist at the University
of California at Davis.
Meanwhile, higher education had land-grant subsidies -- federally
backed institutions dating back to the Morrill Land-Grant Acts of 1862
and 1890. "Because they were public institutions, tuition was cheaper on
account of public subsidies," said Gary Gerstle, a historian and
political scientist at Vanderbilt University. "This was clearly a
government benefit."
Health funding for mothers and newborns. In 1921,
President Warren G. Harding signed the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and
Infancy Protection Act, which gave states matching federal funds to
build and operate prenatal and child health care centers.
All told, by 1922, various expenditures for public benefits amounted to
6.8 percent of expenditures by the three levels of government combined.
Santorum does have a point that social welfare spending by 1925 was
relatively small compared to what it would ultimately become, because
two major programs, Social Security and Medicare, didn't start until
later.
It’s worth noting that the specific individual Santorum cited -- his
newly arrived immigrant grandfather -- wouldn’t have directly benefited
from military pensions or a land-grant college upon his arrival on these
shores, though other immigrants, such as those who arrived in time to
serve in previous wars, could have. Experts contacted for this story
said they were not aware that the benefits provided were restricted only
to the native-born.
In the meantime, his ability to collect worker compensation would have
depended on what state he lived in upon his arrival. Similarly, the
local aid to the poor he would have qualified for would have varied
significantly depending on what city or county he lived in, and it would
have been small by the standards of later decades. Still, it was not
zero, as Santorum said.
Our ruling
Contrary to Santorum’s claim, millions of Americans in the 1920s would
have either qualified for benefits directly, such as payments to
veterans, or have been protected by work
ers' compensation laws that
provided benefits to those who became disabled by their jobs. And state
and local governments had the longstanding role of paying support to
people who were disabled or indigent. This provides a much more complex
picture than Santorum is painting. We rate his statement False.
About this statement:
Published: Wednesday, August 29th, 2012 at 7:30 p.m. Subjects:Welfare Sources:
Rick Santorum, speech at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Aug. 28, 2012
Email interview with Eugene Steuerle, fellow with the Urban Institute, Mar. 5, 2012
Email interview with Caleb Quackenbush, research assistant with the Urban Institute, Mar. 5, 2012
Email interview with Michael B. Katz, historian at the University of Pennsylvania, Mar. 5, 2012
Email interview with Peter Lindert, economist at the University of California at Davis, Mar. 5, 2012
Email interview with Price V. Fishback, economist with the University of Arizona, Mar. 5, 2012
Email interview with Henry Aaron, economist at the Brookings Institution, Mar. 5, 2012
Email interview with Gary Burtless, economist at the Brookings Institution, Mar. 5, 2012
Email interview with Dean Baker, economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Mar. 5, 2012
Email interview with Arloc Sherman, economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Mar. 5, 2012
Email interview with Gary Gerstle, professor of history and political science at Vanderbilt University, Mar. 6, 2012
Email interview with Douglas J. Besharov, public policy professor at the University of Maryland, Mar. 5, 2012 and Aug. 29, 2012
Email interview with Timothy M. Smeeding, director of the Institute for
Research on Poverty at the Robert M. La Follette School of Public
Affairs at the University of Wisconsin, Mar. 5, 2012 and Aug. 29, 2012
FOR those stupid enough to believe mitt on this, and his claim he abhors class warfare (the propaganda campaign by the 1% against the 99%) from PolitiFact....
The Truth-O-Meter Says:
"Under Obama’s plan (for welfare), you wouldn’t have to work and
wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare
check."
Mitt Romney on Monday, August 6th, 2012 in a campaign ad
Mitt Romney says Barack Obama’s plan for welfare reform: "They just send you your check."
Share this story:
An ad from Mitt Romney attacks Barack Obama on welfare reform.
Forget, for a moment, tax cuts and the fiscal cliff. Mitt Romney wants to talk about welfare.
A Romney ad
opens with a picture of President Bill Clinton signing the 1996 landmark
welfare reform act, which shifted the program from indefinite
government assistance to one based on steering people toward employment
and self-reliance.
The words "unprecedented success" flash on the screen. Clinton and a
bipartisan Congress, a narrator says, "helped end welfare as we know it
by requiring work for welfare."
A leather-gloved laborer wipes sweat from his forehead.
"But on July 12," the ad continues, "President Obama quietly announced a
plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements. Under Obama’s
plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job.
They just send you your welfare check, and ‘welfare to work’ goes back
to being plain old welfare."
The July 12 announcement, made by the the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, or HHS, allows states to try different ways of meeting
the work requirements of the federal law. Does it really mean "they just
send you your welfare check"? We decided to look further.
The HHS memo
Since 1996, welfare has been administered through block grants to
states through a program called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.
TANF, as it’s called, limits how long families can get aid and requires
recipients to eventually go to work. It also includes stringent
reporting requirements for states to show they are successfully moving
people off welfare and and into the workforce.
A memo
from George Sheldon, the acting assistant secretary at HHS, said the
department wanted to give states more flexibility in meeting those
requirements. The memo notifies states "of the Secretary’s willingness
to exercise her waiver authority ... to allow states to test alternative
and innovative strategies, policies, and procedures that are designed
to improve employment outcomes for needy families."
The memo outlined, using the jargon of a federal bureaucracy, the kinds
of waivers that would be considered. It suggested projects that
"improve collaboration with the workforce and/or post-secondary
education systems" and "demonstrate strategies for more effectively
serving individuals with disabilities," to give two examples.
What does all that mean?
"If you can do a better job connecting people to work, we would
consider waiving certain parts of the performance measures and use
alternate measures," is how Liz Schott, a senior fellow at the
left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, translated the
memo’s point. (The center supports the plan.)
Schott, who studies welfare policy, said TANF sets guidelines for what
activities may count toward meeting the law’s work requirements: jobs,
job training, internships or school, to name a few. Beyond that, it puts
restrictions on how many hours a welfare client may spend at school, or
how many consecutive months they can attend before that activity no
longer counts toward the work requirement.
The result: "States are running less-effective programs than they might
be, because they are so driven by performance measurement as it’s set
forth in the federal law," Schott said.
The waivers, then, would allow for flexibility. For example, someone
with a special-needs child might require different work arrangements
than are currently allowed. Or a person who needs to improve his or her
English skills might need more time to take classes.
"It’s really about the underlying program," Schott said. "The real
starting place is: What’s the most effective program to get this person
to work?"
Romney’s assertion
In a memo released along with the ad, the Romney campaign says the
change "undermines the very premise of welfare reform. It is an insult
to Americans on welfare who are looking for an opportunity to build
better lives for themselves. And it is a kick in the gut to the millions
of hard-working middle-class taxpayers struggling in today’s economy,
working more for less but always preferring self-sufficiency to a
government handout."
Obama, it says, "hopes states will consider approaches that remove work participation rate requirements all together."
The HHS letter contains no such language. In several places, it says
only proposals from states that "improve employment outcomes" will be
considered.
It’s important to note, however, that the waivers would not just be a
change on paper. Schott said it’s possible that waivers will allow
states to get credit under the work requirement for things that don’t
count currently.
That possibility has critics of the proposal up in arms. Robert Rector,
a welfare expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said it could ultimately allow "state bureaucrats" to count activities that aren't really work.
We should point out that those concerns are at odds with the policy's stated goal of encouraging employment.
The Romney campaign also contends that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius
is not legally allowed to waive the existing work requirements. Rector
argues that the part of the law allowing waivers does not cover TANF
work provisions.
"Critically, this section, as well as most other TANF requirements, is
deliberately not listed... its provisions cannot be waived," Rector wrote in a July 12 column in the National Review.
We think that’s a noteworthy point, but it’s one that a court will have to settle.
Our ruling
Romney’s ad says, "Under Obama’s plan (for welfare), you wouldn’t have
to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your
welfare check."
That's a drastic distortion of the planned changes to Temporary
Assistance to Needy Families. By granting waivers to states, the Obama
administration is seeking to make welfare-to-work efforts more
successful, not end them. What’s more, the waivers would apply to
individually evaluated pilot programs -- HHS is not proposing a blanket,
national change to welfare law.
The ad tries to connect the dots to reach this zinger: "They just send
you your welfare check." The HHS memo in no way advocates that practice.
In fact, it says the new policy is "designed to improve employment
outcomes for needy families."
The ad’s claim is not accurate, and it inflames old resentments about
able-bodied adults sitting around collecting public assistance. Pants on
Fire
MORE of the real mitt romney, this time he is relating to African-Americans....
In yet another seemingly faux pas moment for the former governor and
presidential candidate, Mitt Romney tells a crowd of supporters in Alabama that
he can relate to the plight of black individuals because his ancestors were
slave owners in the 1800′s.
Mitt Romney was addressing a crowd in Prattville, Alabama this past Monday
when he stated:
I understand how difficult it can be for an
African-American in today’s society. In fact, I can relate to black people very
well indeed. My ancestors once owned slaves, and it is in my lineage to work
closely with the black community. However, just because they were freed over a
century ago doesn’t mean they can now be freeloaders. They need to be told to
work hard, and the incentives just aren’t there for them anymore. When I’m
president I plan to work closely with the black community to bring a sense of
pride and work ethic back into view for them.
HERE is an e mail making the rounds, fanning the flames of hatred and ignorance that are so prevalent among the gop, tea-baggers and extremist right wing. Many people who forward lies like this are Christians and so would do well to check out the facts before participating in spreading lies, deceptions, propaganda, fear and hatred.
Elaborate Welfare Housing Project
Claim: Video clip shows Tacoma housing development "built for illegal immigrants" who are receiving "refugee pay."
FALSE
Example:[Collected via e-mail, July 2011]
I want to move to Tacoma.. to the good life!
Here is a development in Tacoma WA (Salishan) that was built for Illegal Immigrants! 1325 Homes created! Refugee Pay offers them $2642 per month in SSI benefits, plus Food Stamps, plus Section 8 Housing. You will see new expensive cars in this video. Wouldn't you like to get a free ride like the illegals?
Origins: As noted by Kathleen Merryman of the Tacoma News Tribune the video clip linked above about the Salishan housing development on Tacoma's East Side has garnered a good deal of attention for that community:
William B. Mount is going viral on Salishan.
The Tacoman once used public access television to air his world view, and now posts videos on YouTube. About five months ago, he and a woman named Jane drove through Salishan on Tacoma's East Side with a video camera and a big box of misinformation. They delivered a 10-minute commentary on the mixed use and mixed-income redevelopment of the worn-out public housing site and posted it on the video sharing site.
The stew of untruths simmered there.
It's at a boil now.
Tacoma Housing Authority (THA) and Tacoma City Council members are getting e-mails from people hot over what he calls misuse of Social Security funds.
As Ms. Merryman described in considerable detail in an excellent analysis of the video, virtually all of the claims made within it regarding Social Security, foreigners, and illegal immigrants are false:
Claim: "What you are looking at is a $225 million complex, $225 million complex, of housing out of the Social Security budget for 1,300 units."
False: No Social Security funds were used to redevelop Salishan.
Claim: "All welfare housing. All Social Security housing for foreigners will get $2,642 a month. All of that comes out of the Social Security budget."
False: Of Salishan's renters, 97 percent are citizens of the United States, according to THA Executive Director Michael Mirra. "We know of no government program that pays $2,642 per month to foreigners," Mirra said.
Claim: "The average income in here is about $13,000 per year, not including welfare, not including Social Security refugee pay, not including Women, Infants and Children."
False: The $13,000 figure is based on out-of-date 2000 Census data. As for the other sources, Mirra said: "We do not know of anyone who gets something called 'Social Security refugee pay.'"
Claim: "This school was built by Tacoma specifically to house foreigners and welfare recipients."
False. Lister Elementary School does not "house" any foreigners or welfare recipients.
Claim: "They mollycoddle these foreigners who come across the border illegally."
False. THA does not rent to people who are in this country illegally, and 97 percent of Salishan residents are U.S. citizens.
Claim: "And they don't pay taxes. This housing is free if you are on Social Security refugee pay."
False. Anyone who buys non-food goods and services in Washington State pays sales tax, and every Salishan household with earned income is subject to federal income taxes. Every Salishan rental household with an income pays rent.
For complete information, we recommend reading the News Tribune's thorough debunking of the video.
Former Sen. Rick Santorum speaks at the Republican National Convention in Tampa.
