Hero of the Week 12-21-13

The hero of the week is shared today by these two people:

(Mike Fitzpatrick - R, PA)

(Martha Roby - R, AL)

What did they do to deserve this honor? Well the Republican leadership struck a deal with the devil to avoid a shutdown and pass a budget that would allow all  the incumbents to avoid the drama of a government shutdown for years but keep the free government cheese flowing to the vulnerables. How did they work this magic? Perhaps they cut their own pensions and the pensions of their staff? Or maybe the cut the growth of the pensions for the civil employees? Nope - they cut the pensions of the retired military.

What these folks did was to introduce a bill that would restore those benefits and "pay" for it by closing a loophole in the "Child Tax Credit" that allows illegal aliens to get end of year payouts from the government. To understand what wonderful irony this bill is one has to understand what this "Child Tax Credit". When filling out our income tax, most of us deal with tax deductions. That is, activities or investments that either reduce the amount of our income that is taxed, or the amount of taxes we have to pay. The key element of this is that when our taxes reach 0, we are done - we don't have to pay. Tax Credits on the other hand go beyond this. When the taxes of the vunerables reach beyond 0, then the credit amount beyond that gets paid to them. This allows people who don't pay any tax or participate in revenue activity to get a lump payment from the US treasury at the end of they year (in addition to the unemployment, disability, and food stamps they get throughout the year). When viewed from a perspective of the people who actually pay taxes and make money  funding the government largess, it is naked wealth redistribution.

What makes the Child Tax Credit particularly insidious is that since the IRS does not check the citizenship of the tax filers, illegal aliens, and in fact any foreign entity with a US mailing address, can quite legally and legitimately participate in the program and get the end of year payola. With this bill, these two congressfolks highlighted this loophole and the despicable nature of funding the "deal" on the backs of veterans who gave their lives to our country with 20 years of dust, grit, bullets, and blood. While their modification to the bill has little chance of making it past Sub-Emperor Harry Reid's senate, hopefully it will twerk the few American voters that are still paying attention. For that they deserve the GAA Hero Of The Week Award.