What constitutes a government benefit?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/26/do-96-percent-of-americans-receive-government-benefits/

This issue of how to talk about what constitutes a government benefit really interests me.  On the one hand, you have direct benefits, generally for those who wouldn't have a tax liability and are net takers rather than payers.  Then you have those who get tax expenditures, and may still be net payers, but with a lower tax liability than they would have if they didn't get a special deduction.  (I agree that this constitutes "spending" as much as a direct program, because to the extent that the $ is fungible, paying less in vs. paying more in but getting a direct payment out has essentially the same effect.  But, the net taker/payer issues still stands even with this reading.)  Then you have the roads and farm subsidies and so forth that everyone benefits from with varying degrees of directness. 

The discourse (such as it is) right now centers on who receives benefits, when what people are actually fighting about to me seems closer to people who are net takers vs. net payers.  Attacking Republicans for hypocrisy over who receives benefits is a bit of a straw man in this way, because I think what most of them are really talking about is the latter issue.  That's not to say there isn't hypocrisy in that position; just that it requires a different tack than simply pointing out that 96% of Americans receive benefits. 

To me, the heart of this issue is the age-old puritanical story of who a "deserving" recipient of government spending is.  Is it the person who still pays in, but for just social policy reasons, receives some of that money back?  Can it be the person who doesn't pay in because they make too little money, and is a net receiver of government spending?  I believe that person can still be deserving of government spending.  The EITC is a good example of a program that tries to suss out further what qualities make someone deserving--in this case, it's someone who works, but whose wages are too low to subsist at a standard we as Americans believe our society should support. 

This touches on broader economic theory, of how good a job the market does of rewarding productivity through wages--i.e., the justification for why an NFL quarterback makes 100 times the base salary of a Chicago public school teacher.  A position against the "deservingness" of an individual who works but makes too little to subsist and is therefore a net taker might be based on economic efficiency or the invisible hand or what have you, but I think most people would agree that the market is not doing an adequate job allocating resources when someone performing a job somebody has to do can't actually survive humanely on the wages.  This to me makes the case for government spending on that person, to correct a market failure.  My understanding of the intersection between classical economics and fiscal policy is tragically primitive considering my education, but this is a topic I would love to spend some time chatting about with a real economist.