Writing in the Times, economist Josh Barro argues that the plan fell afoul of opinion-leaders who are affluent—making more than $200, 000 a year, say—and lack the perception to see that 529s largely benefit the affluent.

But in practice, politicians from both parties have made a point of holding the group you might call the “merely affluent” harmless from tax increases. If you make $150,000 to $225,000, you make about two to three times the national median income for a married couple. The list of occupations that can get you into this income bracket — government official, academic, lobbyist, journalist — can sometimes make it hard for people in political circles to remember that 92 percent of American married couples make less than $200,000 a year.

As someone who squarely fits this description—I’m a journalist, my wife works, our household income is above $200k—and someone who thought Obama’s plan was a mistake, I wince at being pegged so perfectly. Still, I think the full story is slightly more complicated.

I am certainly grateful to have the financial resources that I do, and recognize that they are greater than those most Americans have. But at the same time, I certainly don’t feel rich; my wife and I live a fairly modest life. We have two young kids, two car payments (living in the suburbs because we can’t afford New York City’s private schools and the public ones aren’t very good, you have to have two cars; we drive a Ford and a Volkswagen), a mortgage, health insurance, child care, pre-school, property taxes, electricity, car insurance, heating oil, food, clothing, diapers—it adds up. We try to put $5000 a year into each of our kids’ 529s, but that $800 or so bucks a month is not easy to carve out once the bills are paid. And while we don’t have to pay New York state tax on that income, we still have to pay federal tax on it. Yes, it’s compounding tax-free, but we’ll pay taxes on it when we cash out to pay our kids’ college (assuming, of course, that they decide to go to college). In the meantime, we’re not using the dividends to take a vacation; they’re just accruing so we can try to pay tuition fees.

But here’s the thing: My kids are, roughly, 3 and 1 years old. By the time they’re old enough to attend college, one can reasonably expect annual college costs to have broken the six-figure mark. (That’s nuts, but…a topic for another time.) So let’s say I’m reasonably fortunate and have, oh, $150, 000—$200, 000 parked in my kids’ accounts by then. That’s an amount to pay for college that prior generations would have considered an obscenity. And it’s still not nearly enough—not unless you get additional financial aid, which at that point may be more accessible for families with lower incomes than for people like me.

So the 529 is a very important savings device for us, but it doesn’t feel like a wildly unfair benefit—it feels like something everyone should have access to, up to a reasonable point. The thing that seems wildly unfair is the cost of college, and that perception carries into a level of affluence well beyond my own.

I think it’s really this state of affairs that doomed Obama’s plan. I grant that 529s disproportionately benefit the more affluent, like my wife and myself, simply because we can afford to save more money. But this is no scam, like the carried interest of hedge fund managers; no one’s getting rich off this, sitting around thinking, hah-hah, can you believe this is legal? In the case of my wife and myself, we’re making tangible sacrifices to save that money, and it can only be used (without significant tax penalty) to pay for college.

It’s hard to feel outraged about the inequity of a tax break like that. But it’s easy to feel outraged about a Democratic president threatening to take it away.