Time Flies...

Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago that the big story was doing something about the deficit? Yet today the Congress is on the verge of balooning said deficit because of the tax cuts being debated in the House. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center and reported on NPR shows the difficulty of taking on that task of deficit reduction as they polled various recommendations from the various commissions.

This is the classic paradox. People say they want one thing...deficit reduction...but they are not willing to make the big changes that further that goal. What they are willing to do is take away some benefits from the highest income Americans. Now the various deficit reduction commissions did not advocate letting the 2001/2003 tax cuts for the highest income folks expire, so they were not in the polling data. My guess is that they would be on the public's chopping block along with raising the social security tax cap, federal worker raise and lessened benefits for higher income social security recipients.

The issue is that the middle class, which does not feel they get much for their federal tax dollars, is not willing to make sacrifices at a time where they are hurting economically. Who can blame them?