Believe it or not, Sen. Elizabeth Warren has identified yet another demographic that needs “reparations” from the government in the form of free money handouts intended to make up for “past injustice”.
The handout, which in reality will be coming from whichever taxpayers Sen. Warren thinks need to pay more taxes, will be going to gay and lesbian couples whose marriages weren’t recognized by the federal government until the Supreme Court’s disastrous ruling in 2015.
The premise for this new batch of “reparations” is the fact that a number of states allowed gay and lesbian couples to get married, but the federal government did not recognize the new couples as being officially married. Because of this, same-sex couples in the affected states could not file taxes together; instead, they had to file separately.
In a number of instances, the separate filing status resulted in one or both parties in the same-sex couple paying more taxes than they would have had to otherwise. After the Supreme Court forced the United States government to recognize same-sex marriages throughout the United States, the IRS allowed same-sex couples who were married in states that permitted gay marriages earlier than the federal government did to amend their past tax returns. However, couples could only amend tax returns up to three years before the 2015 ruling. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is calling for the government to “recognize its mistakes” and repay the excess tax money.
It all sounds fair on paper, and it’s sure to please politically correct liberals who think that the LGBTQ community should get whatever it wants. However, Sen. Warren’s presentation of her new plan makes it clear that she hasn’t thought much about the logistics.
First of all, the federal government has already spent all the money that it earned in taxes many years ago. This means that the money for the extra refunds would need to come from a different source, and Sen. Warren has not identified what that source is going to be. Second, there is no way that Sen. Warren’s plan will “only” cost the government $57 million like she says. The fact that the plan does not include gay and lesbian couples living in states that did not recognize gay marriage at a state level is sure to cause resentment. If Sen. Warren doesn’t amend the plan to include more people, she could face angry, left-out voters in key states or even be faced with court action.
Thankfully, there are plenty of savvy news readers who see through Sen. Warren’s attempts to buy votes from certain demographics. These voters are calling the senator out for pandering to the far-left in a desperate attempt to be noticed in an over-crowded Democratic primary field. They also note that the odds of such a bill passing the Senate are slim to none; it would need 60 votes to become law, and there simply aren’t that many far-left Democrats in the Senate to do the job.
The fact that one of the top three Democrat presidential candidates is essentially bribing voters to promote her political career is scary. What is perhaps just as scary is the fact that many mainstream media outlets are simply refusing to note the obvious fact that the federal government, which is $22 trillion in debt and won’t be able to fully fund Social Security payments in the next 15 years, simply cannot afford to forgive everyone’s student loans, pay out billions in reparations to the descendants of former slaves, and offer tax refunds to all offended gay and lesbian couples.
Unfortunately, many news outlets, progressive activists and far-left voters think that handing out free money is one of the government’s jobs, and will be sorely disappointed to discover that those who sought to buy their votes with outlandish promises are unable to keep their word.
