The Arka-Tech: There’s Lies, Damned lies, and there’s Romney’s 47 Percent
media mentionWritten by Nicholas Tackett
Saturday, 29 September 2012 17:29
Last week, remarks made by Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney came to light, and the results have not been pretty for the Romney campaign. These remarks formed a disparaging light on nearly half of the nation, casting 47 percent of people as ‘takers’ who depend on government versus the 53 percent of the country who are ‘makers.’ Many political analysts have called this a major blunder for the Romney campaign at a time when he is already reeling from bad reception to his comments on Obama’s foreign policy the week before. But what are the facts about this ‘taker’ vs. ‘maker’ dichotomy?
Let’s set up how it all began: in May, Romney was speaking at a private fundraiser at the house of a hedge fund manager. During this time, he was apparently secretly filmed by one of the audience members, who later gave the material to Mother Jones, a liberal website that then published the tapes. The tapes include something like an hour of Romney speaking, including the infamous ’47 percent’ comment around which the controversy has grown.
The full statement: “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax…[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
So, how does this claim hold up to reality? Well, there is an old saying that goes, “There are lies, damned lies, and then there are statistics.” This is often used to emphasize that statistics are more mischievous than outright lies by being technically true but misleading when used without a broader context.
Start with the bald statistic: it is true that in the United States, an estimated 53.6 percent of households paid federal income tax, with 46.4 percent not paying federal income tax. On the face of it, then, Romney is technically correct: about 47 percent of people don’t pay federal income tax. But here is where it gets complicated.
The non-partisan Tax Policy Center (TPC) points out that 28.3 percent of households that pay no federal income tax actually do pay the payroll tax, a federal tax. This is about two-thirds of the 47 percent. Of the remaining 18.1 percent of households (who don’t pay federal income taxes or payroll taxes,) 10.3 percent are senior citizens while 6.9 percent are non-elderly who make less than $20,000 a year, leaving less than 1% of overall households making more than $20,000 a year while not paying federal income tax.
Now, to restate that in English: of the 47 percent who “pay no income tax,” two-thirds still pay federal taxes, and the other one-third are either people on Social Security or those barely above the poverty line. These facts should come as no surprise to Romney or any other politician: it is a longstanding governmental policy to allow tax exemptions for those living on Social Security and the very poor as the tax code part of our social safety net, otherwise known as the ‘Don’t kick ’em while they’re down’ policy.
All of this, though, hasn’t even considered state and local taxes (such as sales & excise taxes) which disproportionately get their revenues from the poor and middle class. In Arkansas, for instance, the non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) found in 2007 that about half of state revenues came from these sales taxes, meaning that much of our state government is funded by people who are supposedly “dependent on government.”
The final conclusion? Almost everybody ends up paying taxes one way or another, so Romney’s insinuation that 47 percent of people are freeloaders who pay nothing into the system is mischievous, misleading, and… a statistic.