The Wall Street Journal today is
reporting that for the first time in history nearly half of all Americans
receive some form of government benefits.
The percentage of U.S. households that do not pay into federal income
taxes has also grown to 45% this year. That
number is up from 39% just five year ago, according to the Tax Policy Center, a
nonpartisan organization.

The WSJ reports that Keith Hennessey
an economic advisor to President George W. Bush said, “We have a very
large share of the American population that is getting checks from the
government and an increasingly smaller portion of the population that’s paying
for it.”

The article goes on to report, “The
dimensions of the budget hole were underscored Monday, when the Treasury
reported that the government ran a $1.26 trillion deficit for the first 11
months of the fiscal year, on pace to be the second-biggest on record.”

Despite the huge mounting deficit
many Americans still oppose benefit cuts given the current economy.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll
conducted late last month found 61% of voters were “enthusiastic” or
“comfortable” with congressional candidates who support cutting
federal spending in general. But 56% expressed the same enthusiasm for
candidates who voted to extend unemployment benefits.

As recently as the early 1980s,
about 30% of Americans lived in households in which an individual was receiving
Social Security, subsidized housing, jobless benefits or other
government-provided benefits. By the third quarter of 2008, 44% were, according
to the most recent Census Bureau data.

That number has undoubtedly gone up,
as the recession has hammered incomes. Some 41.3 million people were on food
stamps as of June 2010, for instance, up 45% from June 2008. With unemployment
high and federal jobless benefits now available for up to 99 weeks, 9.7 million
unemployed workers were receiving checks in late August 2010, more than twice
as many as the 4.2 million in August 2008.

Still more Americans — 19 million
by 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office — will get federal aid
to buy health insurance when legislation passed this year is implemented.

(…)

Cutting spending on these
“entitlements” is widely seen as an inevitable ingredient in any
credible deficit-reduction program. Yet despite occasional bouts of
belt-tightening in Washington and bursts of discussion about restraining big
government, the trend toward more Americans receiving government benefits of
one sort or another has continued for more than 70 years — and shows no sign
of abating.

An aging population is adding to the
ranks of Americans receiving government benefits, and will continue to do so as
more of the large baby-boom generation, those born between 1946 and 1964,
become eligible. Today, an estimated 47.4 million people are enrolled in
Medicare, up 38% from 1990. By 2030, the number is projected to be 80.4
million.

Unfortunately, Europe is already
demonstrating the harm an entitlement population can cause. European leaders have struggled to combat
growing deficits and economic collapse caused in part by socialistic programs including
welfare benefits, monthly allowances for children regardless of income, free
college tuition, universal health care and public retirement programs.

“German Chancellor Angela Merkel has
exempted pensions from her government’s planned budget cuts, reflecting the
growing power of the retiree vote. French President Nicolas Sarkozy is facing
mass protests, including a national strike week, as he tries to raise France’s
minimum retirement age from 60 to 62. Greece’s government had to face down
demonstrations this year when it slashed pension benefits, as it was forced to
do to get bailout money from other European countries and the International
Monetary Fund.”

See the entire Wall Street Journal
article HERE

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