Obama Campaign's New Ad Attacks Romney's 47 Percent Idea 'In His Own Words'

According to 2008 data from the Cornell Survey Research Institute reported Monday in a Times opinion piece, that 96 percent of Americans have taken part in government benefit programs in one form or another.

Listed below are 21 programs referenced by the researchers. Numbers 1 through 13 are “direct,” meaning that the aid comes directly from the government; the remainder are considered “submerged,” in that they come indirectly, through government tax policies. (For instance, the money you put in your workplace 401(k) plan grows tax-deferred).

1) Head Start

2) Social Security Disability

3) Social Security Retirement and Survivors Benefits

4) Supplemental Security Income (SSI)

5) Medicaid

6) Medicare

7) Welfare (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or T.A.N.F.)

8) G.I. Bill

9) Veterans’ benefits

10) Pell Grants

11) Unemployment Insurance

12) Food Stamps

13) Government Subsidized Housing

14) Home Mortgage Interest Deduction

15) Hope and Lifetime Learning Tax Credits

16) Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit

17) 529 accounts (qualified tuition programs) or Coverdell education savings account (Education I.R.A.’s)

18) Earned-income tax credit

19) Employer subsidized health insurance

20) Employer subsidized retirement benefits
[Numbers 19 and 20 are even more submerged than the other policies in that group, because unlike with the others, people take no actual steps to claim the government benefit. As long as one is acquiring those employer-provided benefits, one simply gets the tax benefit — if the employer put the same money in people’s paychecks, they would have to owe taxes on it.]

21) Federal student loans

How many of these have you received or relied on? Are you poor, working class, middle class, upper middle class, or part of the 1 percent?
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