Efforts to tame America’s ballooning budget deficit could soon confront a daunting reality: Nearly half of all Americans live in a household in which someone receives government benefits, more than at any time in history.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the fraction of American households not paying federal income taxes has also grown\u201d\u201dto an estimated 45% in 2010, from 39% five years ago, according to the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research organization.<\/p>\n
A little more than half don’t earn enough to be taxed; the rest take so many credits and deductions they don’t owe anything. Most still get hit with Medicare and Social Security payroll taxes, but 13% of all U.S. households pay neither federal income nor payroll taxes.<\/p>\n
“We have a very large share of the American population that is getting checks from the government,” says Keith Hennessey, an economic adviser to President George W. Bush and now a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, “and an increasingly smaller portion of the population that’s paying for it.”<\/p>\n