True cost

I have always been interested in politics. In 1956 I campaigned for Stevenson against Ike even though I was only 19 and at that time you had to be 21 to vote. In 1960 I switched parties and voted for Nixon against Kennedy as I figured a millionaire could not relate to the general public. Over the years I was always amazed that any Republican could be elected since they were called the part of the rich and there were many more poor people. The answer to this was twofold. First polls showed that many poor people did not vote and second many poor people planned on getting rich. President Obama won because poor people voted and his party lost in 2014 because the poor people were disillusioned and stayed home. He had it right when he said the Democrats lost because only 36% of the eligible voters voted. His state of the union message is designed to overcome this voter apathy by promising freebees to the low income groups. He is offering a tax cut to the middle income and an increase in the child tax credit and free community college which will help both the middle income and low income groups. He plans to pay for these new benefits by taxing the rich to the tune of 32 billion dollars per year and this of course solicits cheers from those who are not rich which is most of us. Now the stage is set for the greedy Republicans to shoot down the entire plan and thus create the incentive for the poor people to come out and vote in 2016. The plan is a brilliant because it will win the election for Clinton. The Republicans line up to prove the plan will work by making dumb statements like, taxing the job creators will hurt the economy. The press will improve the plans success chances by not investigating the cost to cover these new benefits. I will do this job for them. First off the child tax credit which is a program that is very helpful to lower income people is now $1,000 per child and last year cost the government 57 billion dollars The child tax credit is the sixth largest tax break today, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT). It costs $57 billion in revenue this year, $290 billion over 5 years, and an estimated $550 over ten years. Of that total, slightly more than half is spent on refunds to taxpayers who have no tax liability. The President wants to raise this credit to $3,000 per child. Do the math. Next the cost of the community college plan. If every state participated, the White House suggests that Mr. Obama’s proposal could help nine million students and would save full-time enrollees an average of $3,800 a year. However, using the average cost, state and federal governments would have to pick up the tab of $34.2 billion each year. And, of course, these governments will get this money from ... guess who: We, the taxpayers. Nothing is free. Finally he proposes a $500 tax credit and increase deductions for child care which will cost about $1,000 per middle class family of which there are over 50 million. Even the Internet has not calculated this cost but the best guess is 50 billion per year. I don’t mind taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor but let’s use the correct figures. Instead of the 32 billion Obama is proposing a more accurate figure would be about 180 billion but who is counting. When you get into the billions no one cares.