![]() These programs reflect what Americans value. Currently payments into social insurance programs represent an estimated 37 percent (or $807 billion) of federal receipts in 2011, compared to 17 percent (or $124 billion) in 1961 and 31 percent (or $455 billion) in 1981, including federal employees’ payments into their retirement accounts (the historical numbers are adjusted for inflation). Like private life or property insurance, everyone makes regular contributions with the expectation that when a certain event occurs (in the case of public benefits, that event could be retirement, disability, or temporary job loss), they will be protected and able to collect benefits they have paid for.Ĭonservatives focus on how the costs of these programs have grown over the past several decades, but so too have the public’s payments into them. Within these social insurance programs, most of the participants have paid into them, through payroll taxes taken out of their own paychecks and through contributions paid on their behalf by their employers. (See Figure 1) Within the fiscal year 2011 budget, those three programs accounted for an estimated 60 percent of the dollars going out to individuals. In 2010, 39 percent of households had at least one person participating in at least one of these programs. Recipients who benefit from the nation’s major social insurance programs-Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance-include middle-class and low-income Americans. Fact: Most Americans receiving public benefits paid for themįor many, the phrase “public benefits” implies money handed out to poor people-but that’s not the case. The facts about public benefits detailed in this issue brief help shape the real debate Americans should be engaged in-how to fund and shape public benefits programs that largely serve the middle class and those living in poverty for the long haul. They also derail benefits programs that specifically target people living in poverty and help them to join the middle class. These misperceptions put all public benefits programs at risk, including those that reach the middle class. This is far different from the picture painted by many conservatives of public benefits being for lazy poor people who do not want to work. Most public benefits spending is for participants, largely senior citizens, who have paid for the services via a lifetime of work. Gross misperceptions about who receives public benefits and for what purposes are leading the nation toward debates that distract from the real problems facing middle-class and low-income Americans. The Biden administration supported Maine’s position, saying the state was not playing favorites among various religious entities. That was a switch from the view the Department of Justice took in the early stages of the case, during the Trump administration, when it said the state was engaged in religious discrimination.Download this issue brief (pdf) Introduction PUBLIC MONIES FREEParents were free to send their children to religious schools, it argued, but the state was not required to support them. ![]() In defending the program, the state said it offers a free public education but that the families who filed the lawsuit wanted an entirely different benefit - a publicly subsidized religious education. Maine said it had decided that a public education should be “a non-sectarian one that exposes children to diverse viewpoints, promotes tolerance and acceptance, teaches academic subjects in a religiously neutral manner, and does not promote a particular faith.” Troy and Angela Nelson sent their children to a nonsectarian school but wanted them to attend Temple Academy, which describes its purpose as “to know the Lord Jesus Christ and to make Him known through accredited academic excellence and programs presented through our thoroughly Christian Biblical world view.” ![]()
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