Mitt Romney: $250,000 a Year Is “Middle Income.” Really.
ABC News has just held an extended interview with Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for president. The transcript is already online. In a description of his tax policies, Mitt Romney reveals the assumptions he’s making about the economy—and how clueless he really is.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Is $100,000 middle income?
MITT ROMNEY: No, middle income is $200,000 to $250,000 and less.
This speaks for itself. (The U.S. median household income, by the way, was $50,054 last year. That means half of America’s households make less than that. The real middle class is under serious pressure.)
But it also raises a few important questions. Romney makes a lot of statements about wanting to help the middle class, and wanting to make the economy work again. But as we’ve said before, you can’t understand a candidate’s plans to help the middle class and make the economy work until you know what they mean by “middle class” and who they think the economy should work for.
No wonder Romney has proposed a mathematically dubious tax plan that experts say, by the plan’s own assumptions, would actually raise taxes on middle- and working-class people even as it cut taxes by tens of thousands of dollars for millionaires. Romney’s agenda shows what he thinks “the economy working” looks like, and it’s not something Working America members would recognize.
There are plenty of good ways to rebuild the middle class—through good jobs with fair compensation. Mitt Romney’s tax plan doesn’t cut it, because he doesn’t even seem to understand what “middle class” even means.
