The Taxpayer Protection Act of 2010 gains momentum in CA
Thursday, August 13, 2009
By Carl Braun
Examiner.com
Taxpayer Protection Act Targets CalWorks
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San Diego, CA ---Proponents of the Taxpayer Protection Act of 2010 report their cause is gaining momentum as citizens of California are being pressed even harder by State tax cuts.Ted Hilton, leading the initiative that he hopes will appear on the ballot in June of 2010, estimates he is possibly about 25% towards his goal of 600,000 signatures required by November 16th 2009.
“It is hard to tell because there are so many petitions out there and signature gatherers that have not turned in their petitions yet,” he said. “We’re always looking for more of both,” he added.
The Taxpayer Protection Act seeks the elimination of the “Child Only” portion of the CalWORKS program and the elimination of non-emergency medical care including pre-natal care. This sounds pretty harsh until you look at the numbers. The waste and fraud in the program are legendary. California allows children to receive benefits until age 18 where all other states except New York cut it off after 5 years. Illegal aliens with so called “anchor baby” children use the program like an ATM machine that never runs out of money.
In CA we have 32% of all the welfare recipients in the US while CA only has 12% of the population. This has led to the State being the leader nationally in benefits to illegal aliens and is a major reason for it having more than double the population of illegal aliens than it’s next closest rival Texas, at more than 2 million people.
Hilton estimates eliminating the benefits to illegal aliens and those not entitled to them will result in $3 billion in annual savings. In a state strapped for cash, once you get past the first billion it starts looking like real money.
But what about the social impact? Few would tolerate ignoring children that need medical care and not getting it. Hilton states that there are safeguards in place for those situations. The biggest drain on resources seems to be premature births of children born to illegal aliens. The Center for Disease Control estimates that 12% of all births are premature. About 100,000 births to those here illegally are paid for by Medi-Cal each year and premature babies account for about 12,000 of these. At an average cost of $165,000 each, Medi-Cal pays out about $2 billion annually. The initiative requires identification and fingerprints of the birth mother to be provided to Homeland Security prior to receiving a birth certificate. This would likely result in many returning to their home country or not coming here to have children in the first place.
Similar attempts to remove tax burdens were made in 1994 with Prop 187 which, was passed by the voters with a 58.3% margin. Appeals were shelved by the Davis administration. Hilton said the public benefit restrictions follow the text of states like Oklahoma where the laws have stood up to court challenges. When asked if he worries about an activist court scuttling his efforts after all the hard work he said “Actually, for the birth certificate provision we welcome it. Our foundation is legally rock solid.”
Hilton, who lived in Latin America and speaks fluent Spanish, feels for the struggles of these poor people but doesn’t believe it is our responsibility to pay for the benefits of non-citizens. “We are in an economic crisis that can partly be traced to the fraud inherent in these programs. It is our responsibility to right these wrongs.” He said.
It has been said that as California goes, so goes the nation. Expect other efforts to spring up in states around the country should Hilton get his initiative on the ballot and passed.
Carl Braun is an analyst for the Homeland Security Policy Institute Group and he's logged 5,000-plus hours on the border. He has written several books including his most recent on Border Insecurity, “Above All Else”
. Contact Carl at Carl.Braun@BPAUX.org.
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