OVERTAXATION OF FAMILIES; IT IS AT CORE OF MANY SOCIAL ILLS

Julia Kridelbaugh is the executive director of Citizens Against Government Waste in Southeast Missouri. She and her family reside in Cape Girardeau.

In the next few weeks American voters will hear many promises from candidates who claim they are for family-values. These candidates will allude to solutions to critical social issues facing American families today. While it is true that no political candidate can solve all the problems facing our country overnight, the power to begin has been in the hands of the U.S. Congress for years.

The U.S. Congress has the power to reduce the financial burden that families face each day from high taxes. The reduction of taxes could lead to the correction of many social ills that plague our American families today.

Allowing families to keep what they earn

Each year Congress appropriates billions of dollars to placate the social ills which come from the breakdown of the family. This breakdown of the family produces crime, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, low educational achievement and poverty. Instead of lowering taxes, which would allow families to keep more of what they earn, Congress throws billions and billions of dollars into more government supported social programs. These programs are a waste of taxpayer money, hindering economic growth while draining family household budgets.

Forty-four years ago an average American worker with a spouse and two dependents paid $9 in federal income taxes and around $60 in social security payroll taxes or 2.3 percent of his annual earnings. Today, this same family would pay 30 percent of its annual income in taxes to the federal government. This is a great burden to taxpayers today accounting for over a 300 percent tax increase since 1948 (Robert E. Rector, "Reducing the Financial burden on the Embattled American Family," p. 33). This tax burden is not just an economic burden. It is a social burden as well.

Forcing two parents to work

The taxes the average family pay are its largest household expense. To keep up with this growing governmental expense, millions of mothers have had to enter the workforce just to make ends meet. Thus, families are weakened when parents must spend more and more time working and less and less time with their children. Parents today spend 40 percent less time with their children than parents did in 1965 (Rector, "Reducing the Financial Burden," p. 40).

Instead of the continued flowing of billions of dollars to newly created social programs, administered by Washington bureaucrats, tax reforms should be initiated. These reforms would allow families to keep more of what they earn allowing them to correct many of their own social problems. This could be accomplished by increasing the family economy and allowing them to become more productive and self sufficient.

Relieving tax burdens would especially give financial relief to families with children. Congress has not indexed the exemption for increases in the cost of raising a child in over 35 years. Even the 1986 Tax Reform Act did not really allow for this increase.

Child tax exemptions have stagnated

A family of four today can only exempt 24 percent of it's income from taxation, which is less than one-third originally afforded to families (Senator Dan Coats, "Taxpayer's Reform Program for the 1990s"). Along with the cost of raising children, many taxpayers pay more in social security than they do income taxes. The percent of social security tax paid has gone from 2 percent on wages of up to $3,000 to over 15 percent of wages up to $48,000. Reform in social security tax would certainly make a difference in the lives of many struggling families.

Beyond politics

Candidates who claim solutions to family social ills need to understand that over-taxation of families is at the core of many social problems. The real solution may seem too simple and politically unwise for many to embrace, but Congress could directly reduce the total amount of federal taxes that families must pay.

Pollster Mark Clements recently reported that over 80 percent of respondents in a survey stated that government spending in general should be cut in order to lower taxes ("What Worries Voters Most," Parade Magazine, May 3, 1992, p.4). But how is this accomplished? How can Congress provide tax decreases without causing an even larger gap between federal revenues and expenditures? The answer is to finance tax cuts from waste cuts.

Attacking waste

Reductions in wasteful spending by Congress would decrease taxes without increasing the deficit. In other words, stop spending billions and billions of dollars on programs that have failed, are outdated, that are poorly managed, or are extravagant. American families are paying for wasteful government programs and waste in government. These families are not only paying in dollar amounts, but they are paying a much higher price that can not be calculated in dollars. All of America suffers when parents can not devote enough of their time to the serious business of raising the next generation of Americans.

Families are the strength of our nation and can not be left to chance. Increased government spending and costly social programs that do nothing to end our social ills must be cut, allowing families to heal themselves by reducing the burden of high taxation. When stronger tax reforms are more than lip-service from candidates, and when Congress allows positive changes in the way it taxes our families, we will begin to see real changes in the social problems of the American family.