Saturday, October 6, 2012

Andy Holt goes far beyond the 47%


Last month presidential candidate Mitt Romney made headlines not because of a great new job creation idea but instead because his true feelings about almost half of Americans came to light. The candid video of Mr. Romney at a $50,000 per plate fundraiser shows him explaining that the 47% of Americans who do not pay federal income tax will never be convinced “to take personal responsibility for their lives” and that "they think they are entitled to food."

As it turns out – this “fact” has been pervasive on right wing talk radio for years – so I guess it’s now clear who has influence over Mitt Romney. He was embarrassed by the tape, but not remorseful. He stood by his remarks that if only those 47% paid income taxes (and we gave tax breaks to billionaires) the world would be rosy place.

So who are the 47%? It includes military men and women deployed on combat leave and disabled veterans. At one point we were compassionate and unified enough as a country to agree that combat soldiers and disabled vets could be exempt from income tax. Now we have elected a presidential nominee who thinks these patriots are freeloaders. What has become of us?

This 47% group of Americans also includes students who work full or near full time while attending school, also full or near full time. After school costs, these students earn less than the poverty level. Again, there was a time in this country when we thought that kids (or working adults) trying to get a college degree were folks we wanted to invest in – now the leader of a major political party thinks they are moochers who are holding the rest of us back.

The Republican leader didn’t stop with combat soldiers, disabled veterans and working students, though. Just for good measure he needed to make sure we all remembered those real evil-doers – the worst of worst – senior citizens and the working poor. Seniors who live on little more than Social Security and working families who make less than $30,000 can also qualify for credits that reduce their federal income tax bill to $0. We used to be a country with compassion – one who decided in a bi-partisan way that working families deserved a shot and senior citizens living in poverty is a national disgrace. Now we have a man who is “this close” to being leader of the free world who believes life was so much better when the majority of seniors lived in poverty and working poor families had little if any chance to move up in the world. It was called the Gilded Age – and while national Republicans fled the scene faster than a jackrabbit – there are plenty of folks who doubled down on Mr. Romney’s view of poverty. Our state representative, Andy Holt, is one of those people.

At the candidate meet and greet last week in Martin I had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Holt about a whole range of issues – including poverty. Mr. Holt proudly explained that he believes the best cure for poverty is poverty – his words not mine. It’s a naive and simplistic point of view, but his meaning is pretty clear. Poverty is a motivator and any help for the poor, whether it’s an income tax break, a school lunch for a hungry kid, food stamps for a single dad or a homemade meal from a shelter is counterproductive. Helping the poor just encourages people to stay poor.  In fact, Mr. Holt went a step further and equated anti-poverty programs with slavery! He believes that anti-poverty initiatives no only give the wrong message – but they actually force people to stay in poverty.

We used to be a country that declared war on poverty – not on the impoverished. What happened?