Huh? The EITC only pays you if you work, it was enacted under Nixon, and Reagan, Bush the Elder and Bush the Younger all signed expansions of it.

At least this Republican thinks it's a way better anti-poverty choice than raising the minimum wage, for many of the reasons already argued here.

As to any difficulty the eligible have in claiming it: How hard would it be to add another checkbox to the W-4 asking about other sources of income? If your total income including the job you're filling out witholding for is estimated to be less than X, it's your employer's responsibility to claim the EITC for you and add it to your paycheck. Perhaps grease the skids on this a bit by giving the employer some tax benefit for doing so.

I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek with the "moochers" comment. There are a lot of working poor in the 47%, and those are the ones that I was talking about. The GOP views the poor as responsible for their plight and not victims of circumstance. Obviously, the truth is somewhere in between.

EDIT: It was enacted in 1975, so Ford, not Nixon, but you get the idea.