October 13, 2012
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Fellow Americans, if there is one thing that this election season has taught us, is that it's all about the money. Well, at least that's how my opponent sees it.
Will the money come from those who have plenty of it and refuse to pay their fair share, or will it come on the backs of hardworking people who are already straining to make ends meet? Will the richest men in America succeed in buying two candidates and hundreds of millions in advertising?
Will we continue to coddle the corporations and aristocrats with tax rates that are half of what the rest of us pay? Will my opponent succeed in passing a tax code which would bring his own income tax burden down to less than one percent?
How many ways can they slice and dice Medicare before one stark reality becomes apparent: Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney can talk about the numbers all day long but they can't talk about the way their plan will change your benefits. And that's the bottom line, isn't it? Whether or not the Romney plan will result in you making changes to the care that you receive. Of course, if those changes are for more and better care then that's great. But more and better care is not what the Romney-Ryan plan promises. Their plan promises to give you a coupon for your new insurance and put you on the hook for the remainder, just like the "donut hole" in the Medicare part D prescription plan.
Romney and Ryan are hiding their budget cuts behind the cold shroud of "entitlements." What are these deplorable entitlements that they refer to? Medicare and Social Security are not entitlements, nobody receives them without first working and paying into the system. Medicare and Social Security are Earned Benefits. There's a favorite saying among conservatives that 53% of Americans don't pay any taxes. That's not true - everyone who works sees payroll tax deductions which go toward Social Security and Medicare.
And now Mitt Romney wants to take that money which he calls entitlements and give it to people who are so rich they don't actually do any work themselves, they let their money work for them. Did you know that people who spend their entire lives earning money through capital gains are not eligible for Social Security and Medicare when they get older? That's right. Because they haven't paid into the system.
Mitt Romney wants to take money which belongs to everyone who has ever worked a regular job, and use it to pay for tax cuts that go to him and his friends. You know, Socialism is where the citizens collectively own the factories and share in the profits. What Mitt Romney envisions is a type of Corporate Socialism where the citizens collectively pay taxes for the owners of the factories and subsidize their profits. I guess this is what he refers to as broadening the base.
Do you see what they have done here? They say that payroll taxes aren't real taxes because they're separate from the federal income tax, but then they want to use the money from those payroll taxes as part of the federal budget. It's another one of Mitt Romney's have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too moments.
They want to dismantle the social safety net because they see that money sitting there and they think about how good it would look in their own bank accounts. To them, it's all about the money. They want to dismantle the social safety net because they will never have to rely on it. They don't know what it's like to be a member of the unemployed, to be homeless, or to be a single mother working two jobs only to have to tell your kids that you can't afford summer camp this year.
To the Romney-Ryan ticket, it's all about some abstract percentage which might change the number of dollars they have stuffed in their mattresses. It's no added sweat on their brows. It's not going to amount to a skipped doctor's appointment of having to choose between food and prescriptions. They are so detached from the hard truths of their plan that they are able to offer it unflinchingly, without a shred of remorse for the people whose lives it will actually affect.
So I ask you, my fellow Americans, do you share this vision of America with Mitt Romney? Will you decide that the protections built by two generations of hard working Americans were a mistake, and that we should volunteer to give them away? Will you turn your back on your neighbor in order to give people like Mitt Romney twenty more pieces of silver?