I am the one I have been waiting for...
...but I am the one who YOU are going to get.
Posted on 05/14/2008 2:54:08 PM PDT by TheMyth
Obama has said that he plans for college students to be able to get a $4000 tax credit for college for each year of school in exchange for 100 hours of community service. To the stout conservative this sounds perfectly obvious. Since the Democrats don't really want to lower your taxes $4000, you can work for a tax credit. However, this ploy is not so obvious to most modern liberal college students and their parents. Too often they hear this and think this is a substantial amount of money for college, and what better thing can you do for your government other than community service? As usual, politicians are preying upon the world that their propaganda has created, and the reality of this plan is set aside for the sake of its glow.
At $4000 for 100 hours of community service we are talking about a $40 tax credit per hour, working for the government about two hours a week throughout one entire year. That's probably more per hour than most college students make, but this time has to be set aside from the student's busy schedule. The student must set aside a morning, afternoon, or evening once each week to drive to the work site instead of work his regular job, study, or relax. In wondering what this community service may entail, I came up with this brief list:
I don't know about you, but considering how much trouble this money would be to receive, I would lose all interest in earning the money after the first month of community service. First of all, I personally can do a lot more to invest in myself than an $80 tax credit can buy in two hours plus commuting time, especially when I have homework and research to do. After classes and a student's regular job, your average college student is going to want to go to a party before worrying about not staying up too late to be able to rise early on Saturday morning to go rake leaves at the Legion Hall in the Fall. Earning that credit would be more inconvenient than helpful. Depending on how much taxes a student pays for $4000, he may be making more per hour at work than he will receive back per hour with his tax refund.
Much worse than this tax credit proposal is Obama's plan to eliminate the current FAFSA application for financial aid. Instead of filling out the FAFSA when wanting to go to a college, there will be a little checkbox on your income tax return form that you can check to allow your tax information to be used in the application's place. What this means is that the federal government under Obama would set up some kind of IRS database to determine how much financial aid each taxpayer is eligible for. So, rather than having an application that reflects your current financial circumstances, your financial need will be evaluated according to your most recent filing with the IRS. If you don't check the box when you file your income taxes, and on down the road you decide to enroll in college, the IRS will turn around and tell you that you did not apply for financial aid.
ROFL..stupid Obama...paying them the equivalent of $40 per hour....more than most of them will ever make post college. What a fricken’ idiot.....let them work it off at $10-$15 per hour...or even less. This guy is an absolute JERK!!
Aren’t parole officers already set up to assign and monitor community service? The college students can line up with the felons to get their assignments and be monitored.
Who has the Obama peckerwood graphic?
Hey! how about this, the 15,000 dollars illegal aliens are recieving to help them realize the American dream should be used on the middle class American parents who are being raped by the education system , locally thru taxes and higher ed tuitions. WE NEED A BREAK! Moronic ideas of community service from a community organizer who wants to be president.
The definition of the “community service” is likely to include work on various favorite liberal projects: helping in an abortion clinic, or for global warming publicity, for example. I doubt very much that teaching Sunday school would count. Work with the Boy Scouts would also be taboo, because they are not for gay rights.
Another point: already your income tax forms are used to determine what you pay for Medicare, and that is without your approval. You need not check a little box. They just do it. I discovered this when I retired this year, and got a notification that I would have more deducted from my Socialist Security for Medicare because my 2006 tax returns showed that I was too wealthy to get the regular deal. In 2006 we sold a family house. I called up and explained, but was told that it was just too bad: that 2006 return was the only data they had for me. I asked if when my 2007 return came in, showing my income more realistically, would they refund the overcharges based on the earlier return? No. They prefer to use old data, and when they get your money, it is gone.
Similarly, if you have tax-exempt income, you are fooling yourself if you think that it is really free of Federal taxes. It is not, if you consider that they count the tax-exempt income in figuring your Medicare status, or whether you will be hit with alternative minimum tax.
Taxing citizens is the governmental function which is carried out most thoroughly. Would that they would take as much care in keeping the roads in shape, or running the public schools! Or defending the country against illegal immigration, or fighting crime in the big cities, &c., &c.
How about the kids working in the real world....starting at the bottom...like the rest of us.
How about doing 4 years in the US military and get a GI benefit?
What about saving for a down payment for a home. When you sell the stock or mutual fund with profit you have to pay capital gains tax. And that tax is not indexed for inflation. This man is an economic moron.
My brother just made out a big check out to a university for tuition for his daughter. He sold some of the stock he had been accumulating for many years. He had to pay capital gains tax. You cannot save for educational purposes tax free. And instead of saving for educational purposes the way people have always done, he has this Chicken Shi* proposal to make it easier for college. ECONOMIC MORON!
You make some very good points there. I have always felt that the government does not deserve my money, but if I don’t pay my taxes the government can make me a criminal. So, they push the criminal entity on me if I don’t pay, but it is the ones demanding the taxes who are criminally engaged. Don’t get me wrong. I think paying taxes can be very productive, but when it comes down to politicians deciding what taxes you will pay it is like telling a pig not to play in the mud. All a politician can do if he has any sense of morality is give you back more of the money the government has already taken, and that is absurd.
The real issue of course is one not even touched on-- as soon as the $4000 tax credit goes into effect, colleges and universities will jack up their tuition and fees by roughly $4000, and give leftwing professors an extra raise.
My kids file their own tax returns because of the trusts I set up for them. As their earnings are small and they theoretically pay their own tuition they cannot use the existing credit let alone this one. Parents cannot use either the existing one or the one proposed, so this would all appear to be a sham proposal.
More specifically, given that the federal Constitution is silent about public education, the 10th A. automatically reserves government power to deal with public education to the state governments.
10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.This post (<-click), while addressing taxes, helps to explain why government "leaders" like Senator Obama are actually in contempt of the Constitution that they have sworn to defend, foolishly following in the footsteps of FDR's dirty, state-power ignoring federal spending politics.
In fact, note that when Jefferson reflected on the Founder's division of federal and state powers, he used the example that the Founders had trusted the states, not the federal government, with the care of the people.
"Our citizens have wisely formed themselves into one nation as to others and several States as among themselves. To the united nation belong our external and mutual relations; to each State, severally, the care of our persons, (emphasized by Amendment10) our property, our reputation and religious freedom." --Thomas Jefferson: To Rhode Island Assembly, 1801. ME 10:262 http://tinyurl.com/onx4jThe bottom line is that constitutional flunky Obama should not be trying to buy votes with taxpayer money that the feds shouldn't have in the first place. It is the states who have the constitutional prerogative to help pay students' tuition in exchange for community service.
The Illegal Alien Lobby would not like this.
A 529 plan isn't too bad.
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