Romney, Ryan, Cravaack, Bachmann, Kline and Paulsen and that misrepresented '47%'

We're talking here about the U.S. population, not Alaska versus contiguous states; I made the play on words in the title because some of the people I've talked with recently who hadn't followed R-money's latest mega-gaffe didn't get the reference, mistaking it for the common reference to  the location of states as in the 'lower 48'.

Turns out the number of people who don't pay federal income tax is closer to 46% since 2011. Some who don't pay federal income tax DO pay state income tax because those tax laws differ from state to state. While most of those who don't pay federal income tax are in the lower 99% in terms of income, not all of them are; there are also wealthy people who don't pay income taxes.  Ooops! you can bet R-money didn't mean THEM in his comments, and that he has absolutely NO intention whatsoever of touching those deductions that make that possible - like his $77,000 dressage horse deduction.

Mitts on R-Money wants poor people to pay more. Republicans like Chip Cravaack who support Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan want poor people to pay more, and to receive less - even when those same tea partiers are themselves benefiting from government tax deductions or subsidies.

From a New York Times article earlier this year about they hypocrisy of conservative Minnesotans who supported Cravaack who want to cut out the safety net from those 'takers', even while they themselves are 'taking' from the government:

Support for spending cuts runs strong in Chisago, where anger at the government helped fuel Mr. Cravaack’s upset victory in 2010 over James L. Oberstar, the Democrat who had represented northeast Minnesota for 36 years.  

“Spending like this is simply unsustainable, and it’s time to cut up Washington, D.C.’s credit card,” Mr. Cravaack said in a February speech to the Hibbing Area Chamber of Commerce. “It may hurt now, but it will be absolutely deadly for the next generation — that’s our children and our grandchildren.”

But the reality of life here is that Mr. Gulbranson [who printed the tea party campaign t-shirts supporting Cravaack, his neighbor] and many of his neighbors continue to take as much help from the government as they can get. When pressed to choose between paying more and taking less, many people interviewed here hemmed and hawed and said they could not decide. Some were reduced to tears. It is much easier to promise future restraint than to deny present needs.

Who are those poor people? Just for example, it is estimated by non-partisan ConAgra, a major food corporation (they are the parent company for brand names like Banquet foods) estimated that 14.5% of households in the U.S. go to bed hungry at some point in the year. You can rest assured those going hungry come out of the 47% that Mitt Romney was complaining about.  Now he wants to take more money from people who are hungry, often homeless, where 1 in 5 are children going hungry, and make them pay higher taxes, but NO! NEVER make those rich people taking $77,000 deductions for their hobby horses pay more. For those not familiar with the current jargon, 'food insecurity' is the new catch-all phrase for hungry, and not having regular supplies of food.  While I do not have more current stats handy, the problem with food insecurity is generally understood to have worsened rather than improved; per the National Coalition for the Homeless, dating back almost a year ago to 2011:

INTRODUCTION

Fifty million Americans – one in five children - go to bed and awaken hungry. Across the United

States, the number of families and individuals who are food insecure or living in constant fear of

not being able to feed their families and themselves has remained constant or been growing for

many years. The country’s crippling economic crisis is resulting in record high spikes in poverty,

unemployment, hunger and homelessness.

CAUSES

Trends in national food insecurity levels parallel national poverty levels, showing how food

insecurity is inherently connected with income. This was shown to be especially true during the

recent recession. The number of families that experience food insecurity has risen dramatically

since the current economic crisis began in 2008. 

The principle causes of food insecurity in theUnited States are:

• Unemployment

• High housing costs

• Low wages and poverty

• Lack of access to SNAP (food stamps)

• Medical or health costs

WHO EXPERIENCES FOOD INSECURITY?

In 2010, 14.5% (17.2 million) of households in the United States experienced food insecurity at one

time.

Demographically:

Households with children have almost twice the rate of food insecurity as households without children.

26.1% of Hispanic households and 25.2% of black households experience food insecurity, compared to 10.8% of white households experience food insecurity.
Almost 14% of households experiencing food insecurity consist of a married couple with children, but 35.1% of households consist of a single woman with children, and 25.4% of households with a single father and children experience food insecurity.

That is the national picture of the people the GOP is representing as the moochers in the 47%; in Minnesota the numbers are worse -- and our Republican members of Congress are consistently failing to recognize the problem or represent that demographic of voters, while favoring holding the line on tax increases for the wealthy, and while favoring low corporate taxes and corporate welfare, despite the fact that corporations are sitting on record high amounts of cash on hand and paying corporate executives and upper management record high salaries.

From a report on 'food insecurity', ie HUNGER, in January 2012:

In the Twin Cities, food insecurity — the lack of consistent access to healthy, affordable food — is almost four times higher than previously believed and more than two-and-a-half times the national average, according to new research from the University of Minnesota.

The U of M researchers also found that Twin Cities parents in food-insecure households are significantly more likely to serve unhealthy foods, such as sugar-sweetened beverages, and significantly less likely to serve fruits and vegetables to their families.

“We were surprised at just how much worse off they were than we thought they would be,” said Meg Bruening, lead author of the study and a nutrition doctoral student and research assistant at the U of M’s Division of Epidemiology and Community Health.

“It adds evidence that we need to build a stronger safety net for these families — in fact for all families,” she added.

“Other research shows that mothers [from food-insecure households] restrict their own food intake to protect their kids,” said Bruening. “I imagine that’s part of the reason we’re seeing lower healthier food intake among these parents compared to food-secure parents.”

Anecdotal evidence also suggests, she added, that when low-income people receive their monthly allotment from the federal government’s food stamp (SNAP) program, they tend to use it right away. “Then, at the end of the month, there’s nothing left,” said Bruening. “So it’s this cycle of abundance and deprivation. And when the abundance is there, people overeat because they’ve just gone two weeks without having much food.”

Right now, of course, the political environment is leaning toward reducing, not expanding, the budgets of many food safety-net programs.

“I think that would be a big mistake,” said Bruening. “It would be so detrimental to these families that are struggling already so much to have those programs cut."

Romney, Ryan, Cravaack and the other Republican representatives from Minnesota share the view that the reason people end up in these circumstances is that they failed to be responsible for themselves.

That is not in fact true; many of them were in no way responsible for the unemployment problem that resulted from inadequate market regulation under George W. Bush, an aversion to regulation that they are still promoting. Of course we have people who should have been promoting sensible regulation who helped promote the dismantling of it, like Alan Greenspan, who has now admitted just how very wrong he was about the need for regulation in the context of the Bush era financial crash that began in 2007, and we continue to experience the ripples of that economic policy disaster in 2012. But we have Cravaack, and the other GOP representatives from Minnesota wanting to make those same mistakes all over again with deregulation and a loosening of enforcement of those protections which benefit consumers.  There is an excellent PBS documentary on the topic, shown on Frontline, and available for free online here, which should be watched by every voter in the 2012 election. That massive crash resulted in large part from massive fraud which should have been caught by regulators, not to mention the upsurge in Ponzi schemes that occurred under the GOP, like that conducted by Bernie Madoff, or the Peregrine executive who tried to commit suicide.  Unlike Bush, Obama and his administration set up special financial fraud units which have prosecuted financial sector crooks - like the recent successful prosecution of the second largest Ponzi scheme in the history of Minnesota, involving Trevor Cook, Gerald Durand, Bo Beckman and Chris Pettengill.

We have also had in Minnesota, a high amount of real estate /mortgage fraud, not by the people applying for mortgages, but fraud by the mortgage originators during the Bush era where the looser regulation and more lenient enforcement was promoted that directly contributed to the number of people who have lost their homes pushing them into poverty through no fault of their own, and no irresponsibility for their welfare.

From the FBI website - note this is fraudulent loans by the ORIGINATOR, the mortgage producers, not the people who took out the mortgages.  These are the same people in the financial sector that Biden described Romney as wanting to 'unshackle' - the reality is not nearly enough of them ended up in handcuffs or in jail. Rather than blame the lack of regulation of the crooked financial sector, that engaged in bad behavior ranging from LIBOR rigging to bad risk taking to fraudulent credit rating and included pushing qualified buyers into higher and riskier term mortgages, Romney and Cravaack and the rest of the conservatives in government are blaming those who were the victims of that misconduct, and ridiculing them for being victimized.

 

 



So who else has found themselves too poor to be paying federal income tax, who else is struggling that Romney and Cravaack, Bachmann, Paulson and Kline want to hit harder for 'their fair share', while refusing to take a dime more from the 1%? That would be the people who have had to file bankruptcy because of serious medical illness.  These are for the most part NOT people who had the money but didn't want to spend it on insurance, who chose to gamble on their health.  These are people who hit caps on costly medical conditions or illness; these are people who were dropped because of losing their jobs, and then got sick; these were people who were elderly, who had costly geriatric illnesses that exceeded their resources in spite of having saved for their old age; these are people who couldn't get health care in the first place because of a 'pre-existing condition'.  In a few cases these were people who could not afford insurance at all, and were not otherwise able to obtain coverage or care.

In short, most of these people would be able to afford and obtain coverage under the Affordable Care Act, commonly abbreviated ACA, and often called 'Obamacare', who went from contributing, stable members of society to being poor, often homeless - and not paying income tax.  A few statistics about Minnesota that those representatives are ignoring. A landmark study by David Himmelstein and Elizabeth Warren found that 54% of bankruptcies are related to illness or injury.  More recent data thant the Himmelstein/Warren study show higher, not lower numbers.  Characterizing people who are financially devastated due to illness or injury as 'irresponsible' is factually inaccurate, in addition to being demeaning and cruel; using these false claims to try to squeeze more money out of them is reprehensible. These are the people that are helped by Obamacare, which Republicans, including our Minnesota quartet of Bachmann, Cravaack, Kline and Paulson, want to hurt by repeal of Obamacare.

From the nationwide Bankruptcy Attorneys website, total bankruptcy:

Just One Medical Emergency Away from Financial Disaster

Bankruptcies due to medical costs have risen by almost 50% over much of the decade, and most bankruptcy filers fell into the demographic of middle-class homeowners with significant education.
“Unless you’re a Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, you’re one illness away from financial ruin in this country,” said Steffie Woolhandler, the lead author of the study, which will be published in the August issue of the American Journal of Medicine.
"If an illness is long enough and expensive enough, private insurance offers very little protection against medical bankruptcy,” continued Woolhandler.
The study surveys 2,314 random people who filed for bankruptcy in 2007. It concluded that 62.1% of the surveyed bankruptcies occurred because individuals either had more than $5,000 (or 10% of their pretax income) in medical costs or because an individual lost significant income due to their illness.

Many Winding Up in Bankruptcy Court Even Though They Had Health Insurance

The average family that went bankrupt due to medical costs had $17,943 in out-of-pocket expenses.
For those who never had insurance, that number is higher, with those families having on average $26,971 in medical expenses. Those families who had insurance at some point still ended up with $17,749 in medical debt.
Three quarters of people with a medically-related bankruptcy had health insurance, according to the study.
“Seventy-eight percent of them had health insurance, but many were bankrupted anyway because there were gaps in coverage like co-payments and deductibles and uncovered services,” Woolhandler told CNN.
But not everyone is convinced by the findings.
Peter Cunningham, Ph.D. is a senior fellow at the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan policy research organization. He believes it is difficult to tell which bankruptcy cases are specifically caused by medical costs and which are caused by the overall economic climate.
Cunningham agrees that medical bills are a growing problem.
“I think medical bills are something that a lot of families are having a lot of difficulty with and whether it’s the direct cause of bankruptcy or whether it helps to push them over the edge because they already were in a precarious financial situation, it’s a big concern and hopefully that’s what medical reform will try to address.”
Cunningham thinks the study may overestimate the number of bankruptcies caused by medical bills while underestimating the burden health care places on American families, because most people struggle along but do not declare bankruptcy.
“Bankruptcy is the most extreme or final step for people who are having problems paying medical bills,” Cunningham told CNN.
A study by his group found that one in five families is unduly stressed by their medical costs.
Unfortunately, the increasing cost of health care is a problem that has likely gotten worse as the economic woes of the country worsened.
“The recession didn’t happen until a year after our study,” said Woolhandler. “We’re quite sure that the problem of bankruptcy overall is worse.”
As interesting and disturbing as the study’s conclusions are, unfortunately many American families live that research every single day.

Romney's recent statements that have become such an embarrassment about the 47% show he is out of touch, and has been such a problem for Romney, Ryan, Cravaack, Bachmann, Kline and Paulson, are consistently factually inaccurate in who they hold accountable for our national problems.  While nationally bankruptcy filings have declined in the first half of 2012, mostly due to economic improvement under Obama policies, in Minnesota, our decline in bankruptcy filings has been slower than the national average according to a recent Pioneer Press article.

So we have Romney, Ryan and the Minnesota Republicans wrong generally about the reasons the 47% don't pay specifically federal income tax (although they pay other taxes), and more wrong in the case of Minnesota as to why these people are among that 47%.  It is not negligence, it is not laziness, it is not stupidity or lack of education, and it sure as heck is not irresponsibility.

If Republicans don't understand who is in the half (or larger) population of the United States, they cannot effectively govern or make reforms. We have to correctly understand and identify the problem to fix it. The Republicans would take food out of the mouths of poor people to pay more taxes, especially children, rather than increase taxes on the upper 1% or 2% to be more equitable. The Republicans want to add to the burden of those who are impoverished by illness or injury.  The Republicans are ridiculing those who were actually victimized by fraudulent financial sector corporations.

If Republicans have such contempt for fact and for people, they should not be elected in 2012. They cannot fix what they do not understand.