By now, you may have heard about Mitt Romney's Detroit speech and what he said about the family cars. In what I can only assume was an overzealous attempt to prove his loyalty to the American auto industry, he boasted that he had a Ford Mustang and a Chevy pickup truck – and that “Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs actually.” Yes, that’s quite a lot of automobile for one couple. And, yes, it will remind a lot of people about how little Romney has in common with them.

Still, that wasn’t the statement from Romney’s appearance that stuck with me. Instead, it was something from the prepared text: Romney’s riff on “sacrifice.” The focus of Romney’s speech was economic policy, including his plan for the federal budget. And that plan involves cuts to a lot of programs. According to Romney, a willingness to make those cuts is a sign of political bravery, a quality President Obama lacks.

My plan for America requires real leadership. And it calls for sacrifice. It doesn’t require a leader to promise bigger and bigger benefits, and something for nothing. Let me underscore that. It doesn’t require a leader to promise bigger and bigger benefits, and free stuff. It requires a leader ... to call for sacrifice.

It's true: Romney’s plan does call for sacrifice. But look who would do the sacrificing.

Romney’s budget proposal has a couple of moving pieces, but the key components are a promise to cut taxes and a promise to cut spending. Earlier this week, he offered some details about the tax cut he has in mind, calling for a 20 percent reduction in taxes for everybody. That may sound equitable, but the rich pay a much larger share in taxes. As a result, they would gain a much larger share of the benefits. And while nobody has had time to analyze Romney’s specific proposal, the Tax Policy Center has previously evaluated plans for across-the-board 20 percent income tax cuts. The result, as Pat Garofalo of Think Progress reminds us, would be a windfall for the wealthy: Nearly half the benefits would go the richest 5 percent of Americans and more than a quarter would go the richest 1 percent.

So that’s the tax piece. And the spending piece? We knew that part already: Romney has pledged to cap federal spending at 20 percent of gross domestic product, while reserving 4 percent of GDP for defense spending. The result, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has pointed out, would be massive cuts to programs that would be larger than even the ones the House Budget Committee, under Paul Ryan, approved.