There seems to be an ongoing controversy as to whether or not the “phones for the poor” programs by Safelink Wireless, ReachOut Wireless and Assurance Wireless are paid for by U.S. taxpayer dollars. We are going to set the record straight.
Yes and no.
How’s that for clarity? The confusion arises because it depends upon whether or not you think a mandated fee tacked on to the phone bills of virtually almost every American is a tax or not. Some say it is, and some say it isn’t.
Federal Law requires telecom companies to contribute to the Universal Service Fund (USF), which in turn pays for the free cell phones program, in addition to funding telecommunications services (including high-speed Internet access) for eligible schools, libraries and rural health care providers.
A law of economics is that any tax on a corporation always results in the tax being paid by the consumer — taxes are always passed on. And this is the case with the telecom companies “contribution” to the USF. These companies collect the money from everyone that pays for phone service by tacking on a few cents to every phone bill. It’s listed on those bills as the Universal Service Fund.
To put it simply, the U.S. Federal government has mandated that every phone bill include this charge. And the charge, in part, pays companies who provide free cell phones for the poor — like Safelink, Assurance, and ReachOut — for each customer they sign up — some money for the phone and then an amount for each month of service.
Some consider a federally government mandated fee that funds government programs a tax, and some consider it a fee. We think the answer depends upon which side of the politically-charge government phone giveaway you are on.
What do we think? To be honest, to us a tax and a federally mandated fee are one and the same — so call it whichever you which. But that doesn’t mean we don’t think this is a valuable program for those in need. It is.
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{ 38 comments… read them below or add one }
I am disabled, live alone in a Federally Subsidized housing, I want a safe link phone, how do I get one. Thank You,
Please look at the links on the left side of the page and you will learn how to get the phone.
I feel as though these “free” cell phones are stealing from people that actually work for a living. Why should tax payers supply phones for people. If it was for the “poor” or elderly I would not have a problem, but it isn’t. I have seen with my own eyes, people that have been arrested for drugs, etc that have these phones. Give them a land line with basic service!!! Enough is enough. I am tired of having to pay for these free loaders!!!!
I am sick and tired of paying for cell phones,rent,food,medicine,and everything else drug users and low lifes get,I am all for drug testing for these benefits,Not for the elderly but for the ones that are able to work just not willing..WHERE will it stop??????? VERY SORE SUBJECT FOR ME!!!
Cellphone companies are making millions off this thing. Why doesn’t the government supply the phone itself. Nooooo, because it is a scam by the Feds and telecommunication companies to make money!!! I am tired of paying taxes and have it go to lazy, jerks that sit around and get fed off my money! Write Congress and get this stopped!!
At the very least this program should be curtailed — eliminate the long distance, international long distance (safelink says to 100+destinations) and text messaging and voicemail. Good Grief!
WHY SHOULD TAX PAYERS PAY FOR ASSURANCE WIRELESS? I GUESS THERE ANSWERING THE PHONE FOR A JOB RIGHT?I PAY FOR MY CELL PHONE BUT GOVERNMENT FEELS I SHOULD PAY FOR THERE’S TOO.I AM SO SICK OF PAYING FOR EVERYTHING THE GOVERNMENT FEELS THEY WANT TO GIVE AWAY.NO WONDER WE ARE BROKE.WHERE CAN I GO TO READ WHAT BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT DECIDED ON THIS GIVE AWAY & WHO VOTED ON IT.I WANT TO READ NAMES.IF WE AS AMERICANS DO NOTHING ABOUT GIVE AWAYS WE DESERVE WHAT HAPPENS TO US.ANYWAY SOMEONE CAN POST A GIVE AWAY THEN NAMES & BRANCH OF WHO VOTED FOR IT.A WEBSITE I AM NOT GOOD WITH COMPUTERS DON’T KNOW HOW TO DO IT.EVEN POST ON FACEBOOK WE MUST DO SOMETHING.
It is no wonder so many people are on public assistance. Why work when they are given so much for sitting on the couch. The elderly have to choose between food, heat, healthcare or medicine and others that have never worked a day in their lives are given all these freebies
I really don’t get it, how can tax payers pay for free phones for the “so called” poor.
Making availbale services to the poor is a good thing, but this free phone thing has crossed the line I believe. Some of those who are getting phones do have an income and can afford a phone. I don’t believe these “poor people” are being checked out properly. What are the requirements for income to be eligilbe? Who decied this program? I don’t recall it being on a voting ballot.
I think this program, Safelink, started in the Reagan administration for land lines.
William Jefferson Clinton (D) was president from 1993-2001. This program was initiated in 1996 when Clinton was president.
Im a little confused….not to long ago no one had cell phones..why do people that cant afford them need them??? My friend just told me about this so all this time i have been payin for FREE LOADERS to get cell phones..im sorry but thats BS!!!! And what am i paying for it with my house phone as well??? I dont get this its really messed up but hey the government just keeps puttin it in deeper and deeper in our as*es!!!!!!! Everyone bendover!!!!
Check your phone bills – cell and landline phone bills – for something that says: Federal Universal Service Fund Fee. Don’t you love it??? They call it a fee!! Lol!! It’s a tax on those that can pay it to give something for free for someone that wants it but can’t pay for it. You know what I used to do when I wanted something but couldn’t pay for it?? I did without! That’s what! In my parent’s day, if they couldn’t afford a home phone, they went in on a phone line with neighbors and they all shared the phone line. Each one had a phone but they shared the line and it saved them all money on their bill. It was called a ‘party’ line. Where does this crap end?? Gotta have cell phones, gotta get free breakfast, lunch, and now dinner in public schools, gotta get free computers, big rebates if you buy a house or a new car, free birth control, free health care…. WHY?? Home come I had to pay for all these things when I was young and struggling and now that I’m older and can afford a little more I have to pay for everyone to get the things I had to work hard to pay for? And notice if you will, it doesn’t say anywhere on the requirements for a free phone that you have to be an American citizen! THIS MAKES ME SICK!! Remember this when you vote in November 2012. And if you don’t vote, don’t complain about shoveling all your hard earned money over to the government to hand out goodies to people so they’ll continue to vote for them and keep them in office!!
well said Heather. Our welfare entitlement need some serious reform.
I too am tired of supporting everyone else. Today’s generation is a generation of spoiled brats and they don’t want to work of anything. The generation of me…. generation you owe me….. etc….
I guess neither you nor anyone else in your family has/is/will collected/collecting/collect Social Security or Medicare, right? Because if you/they have/do/will, you’ll be guilty of taking something that someone else paid for. So please keep your greedy, selfish, nasty opinions to yourself until you actually know what you’re talking about.
Comparing Social Security/Medicare which are programs that predominantly help people who are unable to work or who are elligible for retierment, to a program which provides a luxury (not a necessity) to millions of a Americans who CAN work, is obsurd. I believe in helping others but our Government assistance prgrams in the country are way out of hand. We are a point where more people do not pay taxes/get a refund than the people that do pay. We need to have mandatory drug testing for prgrams such as these because all we are doing is enabling and condoneing the problem.
I am. A. Us citizen, caucasion, tax payer,retired.
I donot qualify for food stamps, to any to the perks, except senour discounts at resturants. All the other freebies i do not qualify.
I would like t have a free phone service but i do not want to to to jail for perjury to get one. Why do we. Legetimet tax paying us citizens not get some free helps?????!!!!
For the generations before us who have paid their dues to Social-Security and literally built this country up after WWII, this is not meant for you! You deserve the support you have so painstakingly earned during your WORKING years!
What has happened to our country?
Do we remember the words “Ask not what your country can do for you, rather, what you can do for your country” ?
See how far we have fallen in to socialism and entitlements. Today, people expect to be taken care of and an entire generation is now being raised on welfare money with unwed mothers who do not marry to keep the monthly checks flowing in and continue to reproduce off spring in order to get a “raise” in their “paycheck”. Rent Money, Food Stamps, Cell Phones, and Socialist health care on the way… Why should someone work for minimum wage (at an entry level job) and give up all these expensive perks!
It’s one thing to need some help to get through a tough times, it’s an entirely difference thing to expect others to provide you what others work hard to achieve for themselves.
It’s an Obamanation!
Another government give away program that is completly out of control and being paid for by the taxpayer. Put in place by the corrupt politicians for acguiring votes from the free loaders. TIME TO TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK, FOLKS.
Don’t care how you look at it. This is NOT any entitlements you get as an American citizens and should not have any funding for such a cell phone program, even if there is the poor has a need. A cell phone is not required to live and neither is a TV. Why is it all poor people have more TV’s, luxury items and eat better than people who work? Why is it people who work and shop are frugal with their money and the people on food stamps eat well. In fact, many of the wellfare people I see with their kids on WIC and collect food stamps are extremely overweight, which tells me they are eating quite well.
Bottomline is the poor might find a cell phone useful. Then someone can create a non-profit and those who want to donate for the cause can do so with a tax deduction. But hard working families should not be asked to pay for others services, especially when its not the basic food, water and shelter. Give me a break!!!!!
Just saw an add on TV, became curious, then I found this site.
I resent the corrupt & morally void pseudo elites in DC stealing money from those who work in order to buy votes from the parasites. If they would do their intended constitutionally restricted jobs (that would reduce the government’s bloat, the budget and congressional terms) by 70%) & leave us to do ours we will take care of our own (while they try to find honest jobs like we are).
There are those who truly do need help with the basics but free wireless is not on that short list. It is “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; not “Let me bleed you so that I can have the life to which I would like to become accustomed.” Need to go or I may start going into detail about the way I deeply feel about this whole subject………
If you want to be angry at someone; don’t get angry at the poor and disabled. Get angry at the former (and now dead) President Ronald Reagan who started the LifeLine program back in the 1980′s. Learn to do some research instead of just blaming Obama for everything. Also this USF fee helps to go to put internet in schools, libraries and other places….But I guess those services shouldn’t be offered either right? Probably because its the poor who use the library for the internet and they don’t deserve access in your opinions…..
I am disabled and very ill and don’t get enough money from my Social Security to be able to afford a landline phone, let alone a cell phone. However, my ReachOut Wireless phone helps me to be able to keep in contact with my family, allows me to be able to contact my doctors for appointments, call to get transportation to those appointments, call my pharmacies for my medicines, check on my elderly parents, be able to be contacted by my son’s school if necessary; and have the security of knowing that if something happens to me or my son; that we can call for help.
There was even an instance where one of my medicines was causing my liver to have problems and if left untreated could have caused me to get very very sick, and go into liver and kidney failure, and without my ROW phone, my doctor wouldn’t have been able to call me and inform me and change my medicines…..But I suppose to some of you that shouldn’t matter right? Let me die and orphan my son….Just one less “Free loader” you have to pay a quarter a month for.
Some of you who have commented make me physically sick. You should hear yourselves, sounding all high and mighty, I bet some of you claim to be such good Christians too then you sit there and judge others……and I won’t even go into the one person up there who wishes to disenfranchise a whole bunch of voters because they feel that the “Freeloaders” do not deserve the right to vote, totally disregarding the Constitution where it says everyone has the right to vote, even the poorest of the poor. Its extremely shameful and embarrassing to me to read some of these comments, I worked as a Nurse and EMT and cared for the men and women of my country, saving lives and healing the sick, and now that I am one of the sick, the people who now live in my country would rather spit me out to the side of the road like an old, flavorless piece of chewing gum than pay a few cents so that I can have a phone. Its not the “Entitlement attitude” that is destroying America, it is the attitude of “I got mine, I don’t give a eff about you” that is.
So those “haters” out there should stop judging others without knowing anything about a person’s situation. When I was able to work and afford a phone, I too paid the USF tax and never complained, and now I am grateful and thankful that there are programs out there like ROW to help people like me.
you can do all those things from a land line with vonage for less than $10 dollars a month. No matter how you couch it a cell phone is a luxury not a nessesity. I all ready contribute to your welfare through social security disability. I do not feel obligated to provide you a cell phone.
Miss Kassie, you are mistaken. The lifeline phone program was started by Bill Clinton (D) in 1996. I took this right off the ww.FreeGovernmentCellPhones.com website: “So, the subsidization of phones began under President Clinton, and has continued under Presidents Bush and Obama.”
I’m sorry you’re ill and I’m sorry for the disabled. My daughter is disabled and has been since birth. Her father walked out when she was 2 because he couldn’t handle it. I never got child support because he worked under the table in construction. What I did do though, was work 2 jobs to support us and take care of her and I never got subsidized housing, food stamps, unemployment benefits, etc. and I always paid for my own phone bill. Now, she’s 25 years old. She has a cell phone of her own now. How?? Because I pay for it!! So I pay for yours, mine, hers, everyone’s cell phone too! Hey Mr. Obama!! Is this what you call fair?
Are you seriously blaming Obama for this one? 1984 and 1987 – Under the most famous and respected President of the United States of America…Ronald Regan!! The one who gave amnesty to 3.5 million illegals!!! Hurray for Regan!! http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/cellphone.asp
my daughter is disabled and we don’t have a cell phone. she has seizures daily and is on a boat load of meds. i could probably get a free government phone, but we have a land line and pay for it ourselves. my husband works fulltime 1st shift and i work fulltime second shift so that someone is always home with our 25 year old daughter. when i see people who are not working, or on disability with arthritis in a knee, welcome to old age or fibromyalgia, say hello to old fashioned rheumatism, it infuriates me. who doesn’t have aches and pains as they get older? who doesn’t have arthritis? my husband is 63yrs. old and i’m 56 yrs. old with 2 fake knees, arhtritis and fibromyalgia. i take motrin and work 40 hrs. on my feet every night. so free cell phones? how appalling!
I think everyone in protest should pay their phone bill each month ALL BUT THE FEDERAL TAX TO SUPPLY THESE PHONES TO FREELOADERS. If enough people did this then it would make a statement
If the schools and libraries have this service for the children then why are american children attending school has the lowest grade and iq. It’s because they use this service just to chat and surf the web and do absolutely nothing to educate themselves. Do you ever wonder what the hell to they learn in school? Why are they still dumb? Spending too much time chatting on cell phones and surfing the web.
Just another example of taking something from those who work and giving it to those who do not. I think Thomas Jefferson voiced an opinion on this very same issue. Ridiculous.
I could support a program that allowed only a call to 911, but I resent paying for conversations that are strictly social. Let these freeloaders work for a living and pay like the rest of us saps.
Mike, there are calls that fall between 911 and “strictly social.” They include calls to doctors, calls to find work, calls to school, etc. It’s not that black and white.
I’ve seen the ads on TV for these phones. They PROMOTE calling family and friends for social purposes, not emergencies. They talk and the taxpayers pay. All of these federal give-aways are to buy votes, especially in this election year. This can’t go on forever and it won’t.
Having a cell phone is not a right…. it’s a luxury item. The looney left says that you have a right to a cell phone and it’s the taxpayers responsibility to pay for it. If on disability,that’s different, those who are not able to provide yourself but a large number of these entitlement leeches/sponges that are capable of working, and should be paying for the own phones. I am tired of supporting everyone else. It’s take away from my family.
You the constitution says “to promote the general welfare” this is where the looney left gets their reasoning, but the problem is that it doesn’t say to “provide for the general welfare, it just says to promote. Promote means to move forward, so it doesn’t mean to provide for the general welfare. promote means to encourage the general welfare. provide means to give.
when did it become a “right,” that people receive free phone service? and people wonder why this country is bankrupt…
My Dad is 75 years old,is on social security AND drives a school bus to make ends meet. He probably would be eligible for one of these but prefers to pay for his own cell phone. I on the other hand strongly RESENT paying for this and plan to look into this further. The entire welfare system is a JOKE and needs to be reformed. I would guess that only about 11% of people that get benefits actually are in need of them. I realize that there are people with “special needs” that will require help for life. However, It pisses me off to see the capable but lazy people who continue to make welfare a way of life. Then they have the nerve to breed more welfare recipients. It is supposed to be a temporary crutch to help you through a rough patch. NOT AN INDEFINATE SOURCE OF INCOME!! Get a god damn job and get you hands out of my pockets !!!!!!
I consider myself a liberal, and this free cellphone business pisses me off. They get 250 minutes a month for ‘emergencies’? If you are having this amount of trouble in your life that you are really making 250 minutes of emergency phone calls a month, you do not need a free cell phone, you need a new life. Being liberal does not mean giveaways to people who do not need it. This kind of nonsense is giving a bad name to legitimate services that people in need actually have to have.
I am very tired of paying for other peoples cell phone and house phone. I just looked at my cell phone bill and I paid $5.32 and my home phone I paid $2.63 for Universal Communication Service tax. I just saw a commercial that even said that there is texting on the free phone. I do not even have texting because I can not afford it.
Where were all of you when President Regan signed this??????? 1984……it’s been around for a long time now…….oh, yeh, let’s blame Obama…..yeh, he’s the target…..just throw more bs about him…….yeh, let’s win an election on lies…….