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Romney’s empathy deficit

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Mitt Romney made headlines today, in the wake of his victory in the Florida Republican primary, when he said, “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” As you might expect, it’s getting a great deal of play across various social media channels, where the “Romney’s an entitled son-of-a-bitch who doesn’t have the slightest interest in understanding what his fellow Americans are suffering through” narrative has been solidifying over the past several weeks, in part due to the incessant hammering of Newt Gingrich on the campaign trail. In Romney’s defense, the quote making the rounds today is taken somewhat out of context. What he actually said, is that he doesn’t worry about the poor, because we’ve got a safety net in place…. What he neglects to mention, however, is that, if elected President, he’s vowed to slash that safety net to ribbons.

The following clip, about the Romney economic plan, comes by way of the Tax Policy Center:

…The Romney plan would reduce federal tax revenues substantially. TPC estimates that on a static basis, the Romney plan would lower federal tax liability by $600 billion in calendar year 2015 compared with current law, roughly a 16 percent cut in total projected revenue…

In case it’s not clear, that means Romney intends to drastically cut the programs, like Social Security, Medicaid and Food Stamps, that comprise the social safety net.

But that’s apparently not enough for the lunatics who presently constitute the base of the Republican party. Rush Limbaugh spoke for them today, when he beat up on Romney for having the audacity to speak favorably about our nation’s safety net. (Limbaugh, of course, knows full well that Romney has no intention of preserving said safety net, but he attacked him anyway, for just giving the impression that he might.) In Limbaugh’s opinion, safety nets are bad for the poor. “The safety net,” said Limbaugh, “is contributing to the destruction of their humanity and their futures!”

Yes, nothing contributes to the destruction of one’s humanity, like a full stomach and access to health care.

Speaking of Romney, I think that Chris Matthews has it exactly right when he said the following yesterday.

“And by the way, when you spend your money — when you’re sheltering it overseas, when you’re hiding your money from the tax collector so that you can have an even fatter life, you know, you don’t really identify with the person out there that’s trying to scrabble along and make it in our society, who is a true patriot, left, right or center. Why are you hiding your money overseas if you are a patriot? It seems like you are part of the problem — in fact, you are one of the bad guys.”

update: Here, to back up my claim that Romney intends to roll back taxes on the wealthy even more that Bush did, is a clip from Ezra Klein:

…Romney intends to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. So he’s taking the tax cuts George W. Bush proposed as a way to pay down a surplus and making them permanent in a time of deficits. That doesn’t just leave him supporting the same upper-income tax cuts that Bush proposed. Because larger sacrifices will be required to pay for them now than in 2001, it leaves him supporting those tax cuts at a time when paying for them will require much more sacrifice on the part of low-income Americans.

And, on top of that, Romney layers on another set of tax cuts tilted towards high earners. The Tax Policy Center estimates that Romney’s tax plan will save earners in the top 1 percent $82,000 a year, but do very little for workers in the bottom half of the income distribution.

The Tax Policy Center also estimates that Romney’s plan will cost $180 billion over and above the Bush tax cuts in 2015. So we can conservatively estimate that his plan will cost more than $2 trillion over the next 10 years. Add in the full extension of the Bush tax cuts, and Romney is promising at least $6 trillion — and likely much more — in tax cuts…

update: OK, I tried my hand at creating a Romney-themed derivative of the Scumbag Steve meme. I hope you like it.


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