Romney Isn’t Concerned | Krugman - NYT

[BootinUp]

Romney Isn’t Concerned | Krugman - NYT
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: February 2, 2012

If you’re an American down on your luck, Mitt Romney has a message for you: He doesn’t feel your pain. Earlier this week, Mr. Romney told a startled CNN interviewer, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there.”

Faced with criticism, the candidate has claimed that he didn’t mean what he seemed to mean, and that his words were taken out of context. But he quite clearly did mean what he said. And the more context you give to his statement, the worse it gets.

First of all, just a few days ago, Mr. Romney was denying that the very programs he now says take care of the poor actually provide any significant help. On Jan. 22, he asserted that safety-net programs — yes, he specifically used that term — have “massive overhead,” and that because of the cost of a huge bureaucracy “very little of the money that’s actually needed by those that really need help, those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them.”

This claim, like much of what Mr. Romney says, was completely false: U.S. poverty programs have nothing like as much bureaucracy and overhead as, say, private health insurance companies. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has documented, between 90 percent and 99 percent of the dollars allocated to safety-net programs do, in fact, reach the beneficiaries. But the dishonesty of his initial claim aside, how could a candidate declare that safety-net programs do no good and declare only 10 days later that those programs take such good care of the poor that he feels no concern for their welfare?

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[rurallib]

1. great finishing line too

"At this rate, we may soon have politicians who admit what has been obvious all along: that they don’t care about the middle class either, that they aren’t concerned about the lives of ordinary Americans, and never were. "

very true, very true

[Stuart G]

2. K and R nt.

[Boombaby]

3. Krugman Rocks!

Rec

[Rosa Luxemburg]

4. Romney is not a 'people man'

[HuckleB]

5. Recommended and kicked. -eom-

[DallasNE]

6. "I don't Care About The Very Rich, They Are Doing

Fine" is a pants on fire lie. His proposal on taxes is wildly skewed to the very rich. The top 2% would receive over 50% of the tax benefit. This means that the very rich are the only people he truly cares about. Can anything Romney says be trusted?

[CAPHAVOC]

7. Obama is lucky.

The Gop is going to nominate Romney. This could be the first 50 state win.

[DallasNE]

8. Not Possible

Even Goldwater carried 6 States in 1964. http://presidentelect.org/e1964.html

Current polls nationwide do show Obama up by more than the margin of error and after today's employment report the spread should only edge up.

Something I think is under reported is that Romney not long ago gave each of his 5 sons $100 million tax free. (More special loupholes available only to people like Romney). That means that the immediate Romney family is worth roughly $750 million. Not too shabby for 15 years of work -- a cool $50 million a year.

[GTurck]

9. I just posted...

on Facebook and added that an aristocrat's carriage in Paris killed a child and that had been the last straw for the French poor; it started the French Revolution. Apparently the rich are not only tone-deaf they are also historically illiterate.

[malthaussen]

10. Or anyway, they haven't read Dickens.

n/t

[GTurck]

12. That too...

Glad someone caught my allusion. Apparently they don't make preppies read "A Tale of Two Cities".