Santorum’s Tripling Drown

Hillary Clinton with a glass that reportedly contains Crown Royal. I've never seen her look happier. Woots!

Carmen, read to the end. The musical selection at the bottom has, hopefully, just the right amount of twang. Maybe you can finish one of my musical selections for once? 🙂

Call it “Triple Down Economics,” if you will.

Do you know some of the general specifics of the tax plans of the GOP candidates? Today I want to examine a surprising aspect of the plan offered by Rick Santorum.

To preface these comments, let me say this: I don’t know much about taxes except that I get screwed over by them and that if you took all of the tax money I have paid and will pay in my entire lifetime you wouldn’t have enough money to pay for the red paint to make the letter “U” in “USA” on the side near the bottom of the Saturn IV rocket.

I have no idea what the hell the bloody difference is between the “Child Tax Credit” and the “personal exemption for dependent children.” In fact, if I did, I’d ask you to shoot me in the head.

Exhibit A

Reduce taxes for families by tripling the personal deduction for each child;

Source: “Defender of the Taxpayer” page, Section “The Santorum Solution”, Item #4 on the official RickSantorum.com website (link)

Check out those modest phrasings.

“Halt! Who art thou?”

“I am Sir Santorum, defender of the realm!”

“State thy business!”

“I bring forth my modest plan to improve the lives of the peasants. It is called The Santorum Solution.”

“Knave!!! You may not pass!!”

Seriously, that is some wonky shit.

So, what gives with this tripling of the personal exemption for dependent children? As I’ve come to learn more about Rick Santorum, I’ve learned a bit about his beliefs. He loves God and children. He hates contraception, abortion, sex for any other reason than procreation, and genitals that are ever stimulated to the point of feeling good. Yep, pleasure is bad.

“Life is pain, highness! Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

According to Santorum, he wants to reduce tax liability for a wider number of “hard-working American families.” Apparently a “family” is two adults, male and female, joined in the sacred bonds of marriage, and, the kicker: To be a “family” they must also have kids.

“Oh, sweet Jesus. Did you hear about the Johnsons? Their last child recently moved out. They’re no longer a family!” At least as far as Rick Santorum is concerned.

Talk about taking a major shit on a bunch of Americans! Feel left out? Ah, it’s not so bad. You get to pay more so your neighbors can have kids. Doesn’t that make you feel nice?

Hey asshole! If you want to help American families why not spread it around? Now we see exactly what kind of president you would make.

Are you a man and a woman in love, married, and don’t have kids? Either by willful choice or perhaps prevented by an act of God? (The plumbing no worky.) Well, you can go fuck yourself!!! Or, in Santorum’s world, “No reduced tax liability for you.” (Personally I like the way I paraphrased his message a little bit better. “Fuck yourself?” Ha ha ha!)

In short, government is in the business of birthin’ yo babies. Why haven’t more people risen up to decry this practice? Why should my neighbor pay less taxes than me because they decided to get all jiggy on the wiggly piggly and I didn’t? That ain’t right.

In fact, in my opinion, there shouldn’t be one single benefit or red cent that is awarded due to procreation decisions. Government has no business in the baby business. This is one area where you find the people who normally hate “big government” suddenly being all in favor of it. In fact, Santorum wants to triple down! Wow.

My “solution” is simple.

We need a law that states that if you have children without the financial wherewithal to provide for them, then they will be placed in homes that can.

On public assistance? The number of dependent children should have no bearing on the amount of money you will get. Period.

Taxes? Please. No tax credits or exemptions should be based on how many children you have. Households with two adults should pay the same in taxes regardless of the number of children they’ve pumped out.

With those two little changes, suddenly procreation decisions become way more critical than they used to be. If you really want another kid, fine, go ahead. But you’ll have a very simple consequence. Either you’ll have to make more money or you and your family will all have to get by with less. Without big government (“other people’s money”) at the ready to step in and make up the difference, I’m willing to bet my paycheck (after taxes) that a lot more people will suddenly decide they weren’t quite so committed to that next child after all.

By the way, do you know who are the worst possible people to be parents? Those who have kids. Yep. It’s true. The news during the last year has been rife with stories about these wonderful people:

• Preachers continue to extol the virtues of spanking children even as their overzealous followers (also known as parents) “discipline” their kids to death.
•  A 9-year-old girl was “run to death” by her mother and grandmother after lying about eating some candy.
• A 10-year-old girl suffocated to death after being locked in a box for taking a popsicle. Family members also forced her to eat dog feces as a method of punishment.
• A 10-year-old boy died of dehydration after five days of “punishment” (deprived of water and forced to stand) at the hands of his parents for wetting the bed.

Yeah. We really need the government to encourage more people sitting on the fence to make the decision for life. What a beautiful choice!

As a non-breeder (current status) those are the types of choices I already have to make. Do I want a Hummer? I’ll have to pay the gas bill. Do I want a 12,000 square foot house? I’ll have to pay for the utilities. It’s weird, but there is no big government to subsidize those decisions for things I want.

In a letter to The Wall Street Journal on Feb. 25, 2012, Rick Santorum wrote:

In your editorial “Romney’s Tax Reboot” (Feb. 23) you state that my tax plan would triple the child credit. This is incorrect. My plan triples the personal exemption for dependent children, not the child credit. The effects are far different.

Families would be able to subtract $11,100 from income for each child instead of $3,700, an extra $7,400. For a family in the 10% bracket, this would reduce the tax liability by $740. For a family with no tax liability, there would be no effect.

In contrast, if the $1,000 child credit were tripled, this would reduce tax liability by an extra $2,000 for eligible families and would be refundable.

If the charge is that I have a plan that favors hard-working American families, then yes, I am guilty. If the charge is that I am expanding welfare, then I am innocent. It is critical to promote families and help them raise children.

Rick Santorum

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Sorry, Rick. Not everyone likes kids as much as you. Freedom is supposed to be making your own choices and living with the consequences of the decisions you’ve made. It’s not supposed to be about making government bigger to further your personal religious beliefs at the expense of people who don’t share the same opinion.

So bartender set me up with the triple crown
A double ain’t enough when I’m feelin’ this down
I’ll celebrate the Santorum I’ve found
With my own version of the triple crown

Props go out to sfwillie’s blog for much needed inspiration for this post.