On September 18, 2012, Mother Jones magazine published secret video of Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, talking to a room full of high donors. He makes many uninformed, hurtful comments, but the one that hit home most for me is his now famous "47 percent" comment:
There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax…[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
My first reaction was anger, then it was a kind of guarded, giddy elation at the thought that he had, hopefully, just blown his election chances, followed by action- this blog.
I wondered what he would, what he could, say to explain 100% of his foot in his mouth. Surely, a politician could spin this, or at least attempt to spin it. Instead, Romney basically said that he just didn't say it nicely enough.
He said that of course the elderly and military men and women should be exempt (no mention of the disabled), but that the real issue is that more Americans need jobs. Wow, that reminds me of some of the generalized, overly-simplified, and grossly inaccurate rants my 13 year old makes. True, more Americans need jobs, but if only the problem and the solution were that simple.
Let's set aside the actual make up of this 47% and focus on the portion of this figure that are on some type of government assistance. Romney's assumption that all of these people are not working and just "milking" the system is unfortunately an all too common misconception in our society. But for a Presidential candidate to spread this belief is inexcusable, and, frankly, scary.
First point: Many of the people who are part of some type of public assistance program are working, they just don't make a living wage. In fact, there are time limits and work requirements built in to many of the programs. I guess Mitt hasn't heard of "the working poor."
Second point: Even if you don't believe my first point, it is not as simple as saying that that people should "just work", any job, any profession. There are way too many jobs that don't pay a living wage, but yet, those jobs still need to exist. It is literal insanity to say that all people can, have jobs that pay enough to not need any type of government assistance (healthcare, student grants, housing assistance, food assistance, etc) or jobs that pay enough to have a tax debt to pay, rather than getting a refund.
Now, I'm not saying that people don't deserve a living wage. What I'm saying is that not all people are going to be able to get the jobs that will currently pay high enough to keep them off some type of assistance and to end up with income taxes owed back.
Let's just say that what Mitt Romney suggests as a solution came true and all of a sudden all people on public assistance, aside from the elderly, disabled, and the military, got high paying jobs. What would happen to the necessary, but lower paying jobs? Who would be doing these jobs? Is he suggesting that as President that he would raise minimum wage to a real living wage? I don't think so.
I live in an affordable housing program in a wealthy Massachusetts town. There are, or have been, more than 1 school teacher or other school employee in my small complex alone. I have worked as a small business owner, freelance artist, dance teacher, in retail sales, and a salaried retail manager all while in this program. My neighbor has an MBA.
And out of the 6 units in the complex, 4 of them are 2 parent households. Often, both parents are working. Also, 4 out of the 6 houses contain at least 1 family member who grew up in Concord or a town nearby. In my case, I'm directly related, as are my kids, to the founding families of Concord.
Third point: Another misconception that I feel I need to address is that people can just keep having children for "tax breaks and handouts." As far as tax breaks go, Earned Income Credit (notice it is called Earned Income Credit) has limits on it. I have 6 kids but since the limit is 3 kids, I only get a tax break on 3 kids.
Other child related tax credits have restrictions and loopholes that don't make it an automatic "tax break." I clearly remember one year I was trying to get the Additional Child Tax Credit. I kept having to complete worksheets and at the end it would come out to the effect of "no, you still can't get the credit but maybe you can if you do yet another worksheet." Two hours and many frustrated tears later, I found out I definitely didn't qualify.
Also, you are hardly making money on the so-called "handouts." It always costs more than you get from government assistance to have children.
Fourth point: No matter if you get a tax refund or not, or whether you have zero taxable income or not, you pay some type of taxes. It could be payroll tax, sales tax, property tax, sin tax, and so on. Gee, maybe we should start criticizing Romney for not paying his share of sin tax, on account of being Mormon and all. I'm kidding, of course, but it's no more ridiculous a comment than his.
I think it is important to de-stigmatize people on government assistance programs. There are so many misconceptions because people are embarrassed to talk about needing assistance. The public should know that we are a diverse group. Please post your story in my comments section.
