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<div class="timestamp">February 2, 2012</div>
<h1>Romney Isn’t Concerned</h1>
<span><h6 class="byline">By <a rel="author" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/paulkrugman/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Paul Krugman" class="meta-per">PAUL KRUGMAN</a></h6>
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<p>
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.” </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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.” </p>
<p>
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? </p>
<p>
Also, given this whopper about how safety-net programs actually work,
how credible was Mr. Romney’s assertion, after expressing his lack of
concern about the poor, that if the safety net needs a repair, “I’ll fix
it”? </p>
<p>
Now, the truth is that the safety net does need repair. It provides a
lot of help to the poor, but not enough. Medicaid, for example, provides
essential health care to millions of unlucky citizens, children
especially, but many people still fall through the cracks: among
Americans with annual incomes under $25,000, more than a quarter — 28.7
percent — don’t have any kind of health insurance. And, no, they can’t
make up for that lack of coverage by going to emergency rooms. </p>
<p>
Similarly, food aid programs help a lot, but one in six Americans living
below the poverty line suffers from “low food security.” This is
officially defined as involving situations in which “food intake was
reduced at times during the year because [households] had insufficient
money or other resources for food” — in other words, hunger. </p>
<p>
So we do need to strengthen our safety net. Mr. Romney, however, wants to make the safety net weaker instead. </p>
<p>
Specifically, the candidate has endorsed Representative Paul Ryan’s plan
for drastic cuts in federal spending — with almost two-thirds of the
proposed spending cuts coming at the expense of low-income Americans. To
the extent that Mr. Romney has differentiated his position from the
Ryan plan, it is in the direction of even harsher cuts for the poor; his
Medicaid proposal appears to involve a 40 percent reduction in
financing compared with current law. </p>
<p>
So Mr. Romney’s position seems to be that we need not worry about the
poor thanks to programs that he insists, falsely, don’t actually help
the needy, and which he intends, in any case, to destroy. </p>
<p>
Still, I believe Mr. Romney when he says he isn’t concerned about the
poor. What I don’t believe is his assertion that he’s equally
unconcerned about the rich, who are “doing fine.” After all, if that’s
what he really feels, why does he propose showering them with money?
</p>
<p>
And we’re talking about a lot of money. According to the nonpartisan Tax
Policy Center, Mr. Romney’s tax plan would actually raise taxes on many
lower-income Americans, while sharply cutting taxes at the top end.
More than 80 percent of the tax cuts would go to people making more than
$200,000 a year, almost half to those making more than $1 million a
year, with the average member of the million-plus club getting a
$145,000 tax break. </p>
<p>
And these big tax breaks would create a big budget hole, increasing the
deficit by $180 billion a year — and making those draconian cuts in
safety-net programs necessary. </p>
<p>
Which brings us back to Mr. Romney’s lack of concern. You can say this
for the former Massachusetts governor and Bain Capital executive: He is
opening up new frontiers in American politics. Even conservative
politicians used to find it necessary to pretend that they cared about
the poor. Remember “compassionate conservatism”? Mr. Romney has,
however, done away with that pretense. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
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