Posted on 01/12/2010 6:00:18 PM PST by Kaslin
Hidden in President Obama's health care bill is a huge marriage penalty. Both the Senate and House bills would set up yet another federal program to provide financial incentives to subsidize marriage avoidance and illegitimate offspring.
Even though all evidence shows that marriage is the best remedy for poverty, lack of health care, domestic violence, child abuse and school dropouts, federal welfare programs continue to discriminate against marriage and instead give taxpayer handouts to those who reject marriage.
This isn't any accident — it is a central part of the Democrats' political strategy that produced 70% of unmarried women voting for Obama for president in 2008.
Conservatives have been exchanging e-mail for weeks about the shocking fact that Obama's health care bill discriminates against marriage while financially favoring unmarried couples living together. This fact is finally getting national attention.
Here is the cost in the House bill for an unmarried couple who each earn $25,000 a year (total: $50,000). When they both buy health insurance (which will be mandatory), the combined premiums they pay will be capped at $3,076 a year.
But if the couple gets married and has the same combined income of $50,000, they will pay annual premiums up to a cap of $5,160 a year. That means they have to fork over a marriage penalty of $2,084.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Are gay civil unions treated the same as married people? I assume those states that have gay marriages will have to be treated the same.
Ah back to days when filing separately gave a higher standard deduction on taxes than filing jointly.
I got an invitation to a town hall meeting with Carol Shea Porter. I’m looking for ammunition to shoot holes in this health care bill. I think I found another round.
Hidden within socialism is a total dislike and rejection of any sentimental attachments. This was so in the early days of the Soviet Union when the bohemian wing of the communist party was in charge.The social cost eventually led the communist party to bring back marriage.
But the people in charge in Washington are Bohemian types who have as their agenda the total destruction of current social arrangements. The state will eventually raise and indoctrinate the children from birth as that is the ultimate objective. A prime example of this objective was the program under the national socialists in Germany towards the end of the war to create a super race via “scientific breeding” as opposed to the random manner in which humans reproduce today. One must also take into acount the fact that parents pass onto their children their culture , their religion and their prejudices. This has been identified by radical leftists as one of the weaknesses of the Soviet Union in the bourgeois social arrangements led to the maintenance of things like religion and ethnic identity, among other faults.
Anything that discourages people from continuing to participate in the abomination of government-marriage is a good thing. Hopefully if this abominable bill ever becomes law and survives the avalanche of court challenges it will certainly generate, sensible Americans will respond by turning in their government-marriage licenses (read: getting government-divorced), thus depriving the government of this extra tax revenue and reminding themselves that if they choose to be married, it’s their business, and their relgiious denomination’s business if they belong to a religious denomination that recognizes marriage, but NOT the government’s business.
Are you still on about this?
You’d rather folks shack up than get married? I hope you are well aware about the consequences.
If they believe in marriage for religious and/or cultural reasons, then they should most certainly get married. But that shouldn’t have anything whatsoever to do with the government. What’s really appalling is that nearly all churches and other religious groups for which marriage is a religious matter, submit to government’s mandate to require a government license before performing a religious marriage. As one evangelical Christian FReeper insightfully put it, it sends chills up his spine to hear a pastor officiating at a church marriage ceremony saying “By the power vested in me by the State of ________, I hereby pronounce you man and wife.” No religious organization should need a license from the government to perform its religious duties.
What’s the alternative? I agree with you that pastors have a religious authority to perform marriages, but say you have a believer who marries another within your congregation. Then it’s found out later on that the fellow is already married. Part of the reason why they are legally binding marriages is to protect both parties from fraud.
How are you to confirm that he’s already married? If your argument is that only religious marriages are valid, you will get people taking advantage of that provision to get married even though they are already married.
I understand your frustration, up here we have pastors and priests who get leaned on to perform gay marriages, and public outcry and newspaper articles when they say NO!
How do you suppose people managed back in the 1700s and early to mid 1800s, when many marriages in the US (maybe the majority, especially in thinly populated frontier states) were common law, and may not even have had a ceremony by an itinerant preacher, much less a government license? And do you seriously think anybody, either in the government office issuing the license, or in the religious entity performing a religious marriage ceremony, is running a national search to find out if either of the proposed parties is already married? Of course not. That's why cases are discovered every year of someone who's simultaneously married to multiple partners, without those partners' knowledge of the others (usually for some sort of financial gain).
The government has managed to brainwash practically everyone into thinking they just can't manage their own lives without government involvement in virtually every aspect. It just isn't true, and it's a dangerous mentality. If government wasn't running this marriage business, then people wouldn't be relying on a marriage license to assure themselves that they'll inherit their spouse's assets -- they'd make sure there's a valid will. And people wouldn't be forced to leave their hard-earned Social Security survivor benefits to a lying, sleeping-around, drunken, profligate-spending spouse who they stayed married to for reasons of children or religion, or because the creep couldn't be located for a divorce proceeding, instead of to their saintly younger sibling who's been caring for their Alzheimer's-stricken parents for the last 10 years.
If government isn't involved in marriage regulation/licensing and someone wants to get married, then they should decide whether they want to do this as a private contract or through a contract approved and recognized by a religious denomination they belong to. Presumably, if the parties aren't consenting to polygamy or polyandry, one of the terms of the contract would be that both parties represent they are not parties to any similar contract with another living person, and that entering into such a contract with another living person would constitute a breach of this contract with specified remedies. Religious denominations would draft standard contracts that agree with the teachings of the religion, perhaps with some room for optional provisions to be chosen by the parties to the contract if that's consistent with the religion's teachings, and if people chose to enter into that contract, it would be binding like any other contract.
Look at the mess created by government-recognized marriage when multiple states are involved. Say two people get married in one state -- there's no requirement that they have any clue what the financial ramifications are per that state's laws, but for the sake of argument, let's say they do and they know it's a community property state. Wife works full time in some boring dead-end job that's all she's qualified for, to put husband through medical school, knowing that she's entitled to half the future earnings from the medical degree, even her husband later decides to dump her and run off with some cute young nurse. Fourth year of medical school comes along, and husband has to participate in the federal government-mandated National Match program which determines where he will spend 4 years in a residency program (if he doesn't, his degree will be rendered virtually worthless by the government, since he won't be eligible for a medical license, insurance reimbursements for services, etc). He's assigned to a great program in another state and everything is still going hunky-dory in the marriage. Wife is thrilled, and off they go the other state, with wife either not knowing or no longer thinking she needs to worry about whether it is or isn't a community property state. It's not. Three and a half years later, just as the insane and unhealthy work schedule and appallingly low (and non-negotiable) pay is coming to an end, and the life of a financially comfortable family with a full-fledged medical doctor as primary breadwinner is about to begin, husband dumps wife and runs off with a cute nurse. Oops! Wife's not entitled to half his future earnings anymore -- they're well-established as residents of a non-community property state now. When did she agree to this massive change in the financial underpinnings of their marriage? She didn't. Doesn't matter. The government decides these things for people. One state says "marriage" means one thing and another state says "marriage" says another thing, and any state can change its own definition any time it likes, without the consent of all the people affected by it. Does this sound like freedom to you?
Free citizens really CAN manage their own lives. Don't let the nanny-staters convince you otherwise.
“How do you suppose people managed back in the 1700s and early to mid 1800s, when many marriages in the US (maybe the majority, especially in thinly populated frontier states) were common law, and may not even have had a ceremony by an itinerant preacher, much less a government license?”
Because, marriage, despite your argument to the contrary has always been a public affair. It has never been private. Laws against bigamy have been enforced as long as there’s been the common low to which you refer.
“And do you seriously think anybody, either in the government office issuing the license, or in the religious entity performing a religious marriage ceremony, is running a national search to find out if either of the proposed parties is already married?”
They are required by law to register with the state, and yes, they do check. It’s very important that marriages are registered and recorded because of the potential for fraud.
“The government has managed to brainwash practically everyone into thinking they just can’t manage their own lives without government involvement in virtually every aspect.”
I agree with you that government can be intrusive, but I support the registration of marriages with the state. I see it as a part of their legitimate obligations, as have been the case from the constitution onwards.
“If government wasn’t running this marriage business, then people wouldn’t be relying on a marriage license to assure themselves that they’ll inherit their spouse’s assets — they’d make sure there’s a valid will.”
Sigh. The problem with no marriage licenses is that they are an avenue for fraud. People can and will get married multiple times in order to take advantage of the systems. You can contest a will based on a marriage contract. If the marriage is not public, then it creates all sorts of problems wrt to inheritance law and the rest. It also opens the possibility of forgery, etc, you name it.
I’m sorry, but I do see it as a legitimate role of the state to register all marriages within their domain.
“If government isn’t involved in marriage regulation/licensing and someone wants to get married, then they should decide whether they want to do this as a private contract or through a contract approved and recognized by a religious denomination they belong to.”
Marriage is not a private contract. Never has been, and never will be. This is why laws applying to private contracts do not apply to marriage.
“Look at the mess created by government-recognized marriage when multiple states are involved.”
This is why Reynolds argues that the federal government regulates the provisions of marriage. I totally see your argument, but what you don’t see is that this is the reason for the Reynolds arguement confirming federal and not state authority.
“Free citizens really CAN manage their own lives. Don’t let the nanny-staters convince you otherwise.”
And free citizens of the republic believed that marriages should be regulated by the state.
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