This week, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney admitted that he is “not concerned about the very poor,” a jarring sentiment that nonetheless seems to encapsulate the Republican party’s view of income inequality. Be it through budget cuts, tax breaks, or prejudicial eligibility requirements for government benefits, members of the GOP are prioritizing America’s wealthy at the expense of America’s most vulnerable.

There are some Republicans, however, who aren’t subscribing to this agenda. According to a new poll, a majority of low-income Republicans believe that the America’s economic system unfairly favors the wealthy and that the government does not do enough to help the poor:

In a Pew Research Center survey conducted in early October, 57% of lower-income Republican and Republican-leaning voters said the government does too little for poor people. Just 18% said it does too much.

By contrast, higher-income Republicans took the opposite view; by roughly two-to-one (44% to 21%) Republicans with incomes of $75,000 or more said the government does too much, not too little, for poor people.

Indeed, while sharing the public’s general distrust of the government, 70 percent of low-income Republicans agree with the 99 percent movement that “a few rich people and corporations have too much power in the U.S.” And given that nearly half of all Americans are one financial shock away from falling into poverty, it is no wonder that even Republicans are questioning their party’s priorities.

During an interview last night with Nevada reporter Jon Ralston, Mitt Romney attempted to walk back his statement that he is “not concerned with the very poor.” “It was a mistake. I misspoke,” Romney said:

ROMNEY: It was a mistake. I misspoke. I’ve said something that is similar to that, but quite acceptable, for a long time. And you know, when you do I don’t know how many thousands of interviews, now and then you may get it wrong. And I misspoke. Plain and simple.

RALSTON: What did you mean to say?

ROMNEY: Well, what I said was that my focus, my primary focus, is on helping people get in the middle class and grow the middle class. That we have a safety net that cares for the poor, I want to keep that safety net strong and able. The wealthy are doing just fine. But we really need to focus on the middle income people in this country. And you know what, if people are going to go after me when I make a mistake — when I slip up on a word I say, even when I say I got it wrong, sorry, that’s not what I meant — you know that’s part of the political process and I understand that.

Watch it:

However, Romney’s claim that he misspoke flies in the face of the fact that he’s used similar language before to explain his lack of concern for the poor. “The people who need the help the most are not the poor, who have a safety net,” Romney explained during an Oct. 20 town hall at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa. “The very poor have a safety net, they’re taken care of,” he said in an October debate.

According to the latest data, the percentage of Americans qualifying as “very poor” — meaning that they live in a household with an income of less than half the federal poverty rate — has hit a 35 year high, so they are decidedly not taken care of. And Romney’s economic plan wouldn’t make them any better off. In fact, Romney would raise taxes on 20 percent of households making between $10,000 and $20,000, because of his less generous tax credits.

Not only that, but his plan would cut critical safety net programs like food stamps and Medicaid, and limit the ability “to leverage federal resources to provide necessary social services to assist people in need.” As the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Desmond Brown wrote, Romney’s plan “would provide $2.24 trillion in tax breaks to the superrich while cutting $2.17 trillion from critical health care services for poor and elderly Americans.”

The GOP is cultivating a staggeringly disdainful view of Americans who are struggling to get by in the wake of the Great Recession. Seeking to gut the social safety net programs on which an increasing number of Americans rely, Republicans have demonized the poor as dependent, lazy drug-users who pilfer Uncle Sam for trips to Hawaii. In that vein, House Republicans are bringing a bill to the floor today to ensure that low-income Americans don’t use federal benefits to pay for “lap dances.”

The bill’s sponsor Rep. Charles Boustany Jr. (R-LA) says he’s trying to close a “strip-club loophole” which allows beneficiaries of the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program use state-issued debit cards at strip clubs, casinos, and liquor stores. “It’s pretty rampant around the country,” he insists.

Naturally, no one thinks adult entertainment is an appropriate use for TANF funds. But as Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Melissa Boteach notes, the use of funds at strip clubs, liquor stores, and casinos is hardly a “pressing national crisis,” but rather a politically valuable message for the GOP, regardless of its veracity, because it’s useful to the GOP to paint vulnerable Americans as “delinquent and criminally inclined“:

But putting politics above policy in this crass way is unfortunate and cynical. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, program has experienced benefit cuts of more than 20 percent, after adjusting for inflation, even as the Great Recession and the slow economic recovery have caused elevated levels of unemployment and poverty. Many low-income workers on TANF are unable to access the child care they need to make work possible and ultimately end up paying nearly half their income towards care for their children. And low-wage workers are constantly facing the threat of a layoff because more than 80 percent lack access to a single paid sick day to take care of themselves, a sick kid, or an elderly relative.

And the big vote on TANF is about strip clubs?

This vote represents yet another instance in the creeping trend of conservatives to demonize the poor — and then threaten anyone who votes against the legislation with supporting “welfare spending” for strip club admissions. The tactic enables conservatives to imply that tough economic circumstances somehow make poor people delinquent and criminally inclined.

Boustany pushes the common refrain that such bills are an “obligation to make sure taxpayer dollars are spent appropriately.” But as Boteach points out, TANF and other social safety net programs are already subject to federal and state audits. And for measures like drug-testing welfare recipients, such proposals can cost thousands to catch one drug user because the positive test rate is so low.

At a time when nearly half of the U.S population is just one financial shock away from poverty, Republicans should focus on bolstering the very programs that ensure the economic security of families. Instead, Republicans seem committed to push a strip club stereotype for a political win while stripping vulnerable Americans of a safety net.

Coming off his big win in Florida last night, GOP front-runner Mitt Romney told CNN this morning that helping the poor is not his priority, suggesting that Democrats worry enough about the “plight of the poor” already:

ROMNEY: I’m not concerned with the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America. [..]

HOST: You just said said, ‘I’m not concerned about the very poor because they have a safety net.’ But I think there are a lot of very poor Americans who are struggling who would say, that sounds odd. [...]

ROMNEY: The challenge right now — we will hear from the Democrat party the plight of the poor. And there’s no question it’s not good being poor. And we have a safety net to help those that are very poor, but campaign is focused is on middle-income Americans. My campaign — you can choose where to focus. You can focus on the rich, that’s not my focus. You can focus on the very poor, that’s not my focus.

Watch it:

Later, Romney said, “we have a very ample safety net and we can talk about whether it needs to be strengthened or whether there are holes in it. But we have food stamps, we have Medicaid, we have housing vouchers, we have programs to help the poor.”

Romney’s claim that the safety net is “very ample” suggests a lack of understanding . While safety net programs kept seven million Americans out of poverty in 2010, according to a study from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, government assistance fell far short of insulating all, or even most, poor Americans.

But his comment is especially tone deaf considering that Romney has proposed weakening many of these safety net programs. Under Romney’s proposed reductions in federal spending, it’s likely that Medicaid would be cut by $153 billion by 2016, the food stamp program would have to throw 10 million low-income people off the rolls, and a key program supporting poor children’s health would face cumulative cuts of $946 billion through 2021. As ThinkProgress’ Igor Volsky has said that Romney is living in a “dream world” when he claims his Medicaid cuts won’t hurt the poor.

And Romney’s tax plan suggests his focus is really on the wealthy, as it includes massive giveaways to upper-income earners and investors, while doing almost nothing for middle- and low-income Americans.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has repeatedly slammed President Obama as the “most successful food stamp president in history” on the campaign trail, and that line of attack — blaming Obama for the ill-effects of the recession and the pain that followed — has become a familiar GOP talking point. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) struck a similar tune in his response to Obama’s State of the Union speech last night, ignoring his own state’s high poverty rate and blasting Obama for pursuing “pro-poverty” policies:

DANIELS: Contrary to the president’s disparagement of people in buisness, it’s one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs, what a fitting name he had, created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the president borrowed and blew. [...] The extremism that stifles the development of home-grown energy, or cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands…is a pro-poverty policy.

Watch it:

While Daniels claims Obama is “pro-poverty,” a closer look at his own state shows that it’s Daniels who is a pro at making people poor. Under Daniels’ leadership, Indiana’s poverty rate ballooned to 16.3 percent in 2010 — a three-decade high that is more than a full percentage point above the national average. In 2008, before Obama took office but a full three years into Daniels’ first term as governor, five Indiana cities had poverty rates of at least 20 percent.

Despite the rising poverty rate, Daniels has remained committed to making it harder for Hoosiers to get assistance. Enrollment in Indiana’s welfare program — which is among the stingiest in the nation — decreased during the recession because of stringent qualification requirements. The state cut food assistance programs, made it harder for kids to qualify for Medicaid, and cut funding for programs like Planned Parenthood that provide health care to low-income women. Daniels has also promised to sign right-to-work legislation, even though such laws reduce take-home pay by about $1,500 a year.

Meanwhile, Daniels’ criticism of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ignores the 64,000 Indiana jobs it had saved as of March 2010, and his “pro-poverty” quip fails to acknowledge that Obama’s defense of the social safety net from budget-cutting Republicans kept millions of Americans out of poverty.

In the middle of Indiana’s explosion of poverty and cuts to programs to help the disadvantaged, Change.org asked if Indiana was “the worst state for poor people.” While the answer to that isn’t clear, what is obvious is that when it comes to being “pro-poverty,” Mitch Daniels doesn’t have room to criticize anyone.

Our guest blogger is Desmond Brown, a consultant for the Half in Ten campaign at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The U.S. Census Bureau today released new data that provided a more detailed picture of poverty and hardship in the United States. For the first time, the Bureau released 2010 poverty statistics under a new Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM).

The SPM includes a more comprehensive list of items in determining the number of Americans who are poor. It reflects items such as work related expenses, out of pocket medical costs, and child care expenses. At the same time, the SPM factors in tax and transfer programs such as SNAP/food stamps, the earned income tax credit, and housing subsidizes in determining those who are poor.

As a result of this more detailed analysis, the SPM offers a slightly different picture of poverty than the official poverty measure, which was released earlier this year for 2010. Overall, the SPM presented a higher rate of poverty than the official measure, showing 16 percent of Americans living in poverty, as opposed to 15.2 percent.

One of the major improvements of this new analysis is that it provides a better picture of the impact of government programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and school lunch. These safety net programs were tremendously effective in 2010 in keeping vulnerable Americans out of poverty. Below is an illustration if their impact: