Message from Disability Power and Pride

Governor Mitt Romney’s recently revealed remarks at a fundraiser demonstrate a remarkable detachment from reality — and a profound misunderstanding of the challenges faced by everyday Americans, including people with disabilities.

Governor Romney’s comments are troubling and wrong in two major ways:

First, it is simply not true that 47% of the American public pay no taxes. In fact, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 61% of Americans who pay no federal income tax are instead paying payroll taxes (Source:http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3505). These are not folks who want a handout. Belittling low-income workers for paying payroll taxes is simply insulting. 

Second, by characterizing those who do not pay federal income tax as people who are not willing to take responsibility for their lives, Governor Romney has (whether he is aware of it or not) leveled a tremendously unfair charge at a  group that makes up a large part of that category: people with disabilities. Accusing Americans who either cannot work or cannot find work due to a serious disability of having some irreparable character flaw is beyond insulting: it is callous, narrow-minded, and silly. 

As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has noted when discussing proposals to change the tax system to force low-income individuals to pay some federal income tax:

“The remaining 17 percent [of Americans who pay no federal income tax] includes students, people with disabilities or illnesses, the long-term unemployed, and other people with very low taxable incomes.  To make these people pay federal income taxes, policymakers would have to tax disability, veterans’, and similar benefits or make full-time students and the long-term jobless individuals borrow (or draw from any available savings) to pay taxes on their meager incomes.” (Source:http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3505)

If this is the mindset Governor Romney would bring to the negotiating table as president, people with disabilities now have even more reason for concern than they did last week, when the Romney campaign was merely ignoring them while proposing massive cuts to Medicaid. Now, it appears that active disdain could be driving those bad policy proposals. 

People with disabilities are not looking for a handout. What’s more, the benefits they receive are not handouts. Those benefits are an indispensable system of services and supports that allow people to live in the community, to go to school, to maintain friendships and be near their families, and, yes, to train for and apply for jobs so that they can achieve the goal of independence and self-reliance that Governor Romney claims to value so highly. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to have a very clear vision of what that goal means to millions of people with disabilities, or what it will take for many Americans to achieve it.

Governor Romney has reduced millions of people facing real challenges to a caricature. He says they fail to take responsibility for their lives. We say he doesn’t understand the true meaning of the word responsibility — which, in the America we know and love, means backing each other up, helping each other improve our lives and improve our country, and not allowing any of our fellow Americans to slip through the cracks in the system. 

Governor Romney has clarified this debate and shown his true colors. It’s not a pretty picture. 

We shouldn’t stand for it. We should fight back. 

You can start by learning more about what President Obama is doing to fight for people with disabilities: http://OFA.BO/ARsQ3b

It’s quite a contrast.