Romney is not concerned about the poor

So, Mitt Romney came right out and admitted today he’s “not concerned about the very poor.”

“We will hear from the Democrat party the plight of the poor and there’s no question, it’s not good being poor, and we have a safety net to help those that are very poor,” Romney said, adding that he’s more worried about the unemployed, people living on Social Security and those struggling to send their kids to college.

I’ve got news for Mr. Romney. The unemployed and people living on Social Security are the very poor. He goes on to explain:

“We have a very ample safety net, and we can talk about whether it needs to be strengthened or whether there are holes in it. But we have food stamps, we have Medicaid, we have housing vouchers, we have programs to help the poor,” Romney said. “But the middle-income Americans, they’re the folks that are really struggling right now.”

Romney doesn’t have clue about how it feels to struggle. Indeed, it’s likely he’s forgotten what it feels like to actually work, as in to have to show up to a job every day in order to get a paycheck. While he’s running around playing at being presidential, his money is making money. To put it in perspective, use the Romney money calculator. Plug in your annual salary and see how many hours it takes for Romney’s money to “earn” the same amount you work all year to make. You can also see how much you would save if you paid the same rate on your taxes as he does.

It really can’t be overstated, just how removed the man is from the struggles of working class people, and even the top 1% of wealth holders. How rich is Mitt Romney? “Add up the wealth of the last eight presidents, from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama. Then double that number. Now you’re in Romney territory.”

Furthermore, Romney’s policy proposals and those of his party in Congress right now are designed to shred the social safety net. Just for starters, in the last year Republicans have done all they can to shut off unemployment benefits, slash Medicaid and destroy the Social Security program as it exists today in order to privatize it and allow their cronies on Wall Street to siphon off the money. Furthermore even as they demand cuts to programs that benefit the middle class because “we can’t afford it” they fight tooth and nail to protect the unpaid for tax breaks for the super rich, like Romney himself, and indeed want to further decrease their own tax contributions to our national treasury.