Gregory SmithButler Township

There is a growing problem in our country; some have coined them "zero liability voters." This refers to voters who get back more from the federal government than they pay into the system, after tax credits.
According to factcheck.org, roughly 40 percent of Americans who file income taxes pay nothing, or even get back more than they paid. Does anyone see a problem with this?
As this number gets closer to 50 percent, the problem compounds. Taken to the extreme, you could say the people who pay the bulk of the federal budget will have little control over the government because they will be outnumbered by people who pay nothing or get money from the government.
Some will argue that even though 40 percent pay no income tax, they still pay other taxes. This is true, but those taxes are paid on services to be collected later in life, such as Medicare and Social Security, so they still are a burden on the system.
The sales tax and property taxes are paid on the local level, so they still have no "skin in the game" on a national scale.
The Founding Fathers tried to prevent these problems by requiring a person to be a landowner in order to vote. They knew landowners were the people with a stake in the country.
Benjamin Franklin was well aware of this issue and said, "When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."
The largest jump in the creation of the zero-liability voter was under Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. One of the New Deal programs that created these voters was Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Its aim was to provide aid primarily to widows who had children to care for. This program grew into a $24 billion-a-year entitlement by 1996, when it was reformed by Bill Clinton.
The Earned Income Credit (EIC), started in 1975, is the main reason people are not only able to pay no taxes but also get money back.
In 1998, the Internal Revenue Serv-ice paid out $27 billion in EIC credits; it estimated that $23 million of that went to people who got back more from their refund than they paid into the system.
As a voter, it should anger people to no end that someone can reach into their pockets and take what is rightfully theirs.
A good start to fixing this problem would be to force individuals receiving welfare benefits to forfeit their vote. If people want to vote and choose our country's leaders, they should get a job.
We as voters need to hold our leaders accountable. We should vote out any politician promising entitlements, or any politician who is against cutting programs that are bleeding our nation dry.



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