George Rebane
[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR radio commentary broadcast on 17 August 2012.]
The Obama administration is notorious for its initiatives – legal and extra-legal – to enlarge and lock in a dependent constituency that will reliably deliver it votes during elections. The latest vote buying initiatives involve expansion of major welfare programs. And I bet you thought that we were actually rolling back welfare and controlling the spending of dollars we don’t have.
Let’s first look at the refundable child tax credit. This program provides cash payments to low-income parents who pay no income tax. Evidence is piling up that this cash refund program is massively abused by the country’s illegal aliens. Before looking at some details, we see that even the ‘refund’ part of this redistribution program is cynically labeled – there is no refund possible if there was nothing paid in initially.
The way you get this cash as an illegal is to first obtain an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number from the IRS. ITINs are easy to get and are required for anyone paying taxes who does not qualify for a Social Security Number. The IRS makes it clear that “ITINs are for federal tax reporting only, and are not intended to serve any other purpose.” So you file a tax return and at the same time apply for an ITIN. On the tax return you show minimum income, and claim as many dependent children as you think you can get away with.
The Heritage Foundation reports that, for example, “a family earning $16,000 a year with two children would receive more than $7,000 in combined cash payments.” Since such a filing entails no payment of taxes, this is like free cash for a little paperwork and no worries about immigration police.
Heritage tax expert Curtis Dubay writes that “the extensive and rapidly growing problem is that illegal immigrants who reside in the U.S. are able to acquire ITINs from the IRS and then use those identifiers to file tax returns on which they claim the child tax credit and its refundable payment. A study from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration reports that the number of ITIN filers claiming refundable payments nearly doubled between 2005 and 2008 from 796,000 to 1,526,276.”
This program benefits mostly Latinos and is a great way to nail down the loyalty of Hispanic Americans. “Conservative estimates show the federal government will spend $7.6 billion over 10 years on child tax credit payments to illegal immigrants.” – thereby garnering Hispanic votes that are cheap at twice the price.
Moving on to President Obama’s recent removal of workfare from the celebrated 1996 welfare reform act. This reform, passed by a Republican Congress and reluctantly signed by President Clinton, has been a burr under the blanket for progressives – and also an opportunity for Team Obama. The heart of the reform was the ‘workfare’ requirement for a bona fide job, or spending recognizable effort to find a job, or attending a job training program.
Nationally recognized expert on welfare and poverty, Robert Rector, reports (here) that Obama’s recent directive completely overturned the work requirement. He writes, “Unable to eliminate ‘workfare’ legislatively, the Left now acts contrary to the law and employs a bureaucratic maneuver to gut the work requirements. The Obama administration claims authority to grant waivers that allow states to skirt these requirements.”
This is the most recent case of this President’s history of sidestepping or subverting the laws of the land. The progressives celebrate his ‘chutzpah’ because they know that it will return millions into reliable, permanent, and grateful wards of the state. And you can be sure that, come election time, they will know what party has always labored long to remove work requirements from qualifying for the dole.
And those are just a couple examples of how we spread the wealth in America. Did I mention that 40 cents of every dollar of this wealth is borrowed, just like they’re doing in Europe?
My name is Rebane, and I expand on this and related themes in my Union columns and on georgerebane.com where the transcript of this commentary with related links is posted. These views are not necessarily shared by KVMR. Thank you for listening.
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