You Don't Need a Washington Task Force to Understand the Middle Class

It was kind of hard to stop laughing when I read that Joe Biden is leading a Task Force to study what’s on the mind of middle class Americans. Give me a break.

It would be funny if it were not so sad that those in Washington need a special commission to figure out what America thinks. How can we be represented in the first place if the people we hired to carry our hopes and fears are so clueless?

Here’s my suggestion Mr. Biden–take a trip to any town or city and sit down for an early breakfast in a coffee shop. Stop talking long enough to listen. Try a barber or beauty shop for the same lesson. Have a beer in a tavern. The key here, Mr. Biden–and all you folks from Washington, D.C. who have become so frightened that people are expressing their independent will at the polls–is to stop pontificating long enough to actually hear what we are saying.

Here’s another clue that could save us all the cost of a task force to find out (what you really should already know)–we don’t like being lied to about the size of the national debt or the fact that you have been taxing coming generations of Americans to secure more loans from foreign countries today. We know that you are mortgaging our future, so just admit it. Admit that spending our money gets you elected.

Try telling us the truth about the influence of lobbyists on public policy. Start with the indecipherable and unimaginably corrupted tax code. Be honest about Congress selling off two or three pieces of the tax code every day they’ve been in session for the last 25 years. Admit that the income tax system requires more than $300 billion a year from us just to fill out all the forms and obey the 67,500 pages of tax code regulations. Fess up that lobbyists spend more than $1.5 billion a year to get what they want for the aleardy rich and powerful from the House Ways and Means Committee–and that we end up paying the difference. Admit these are the reasons you hate the FairTax.

Maybe being truthful and actually listening will then lead you to the plain and obvious fact that we are mad as hell that you and the rest of the political class in Washington can barely disguise your contempt for those of us who live outside Washington . We lost a lot of our retirement savings in this economic meltdown because of government fumbling and a whole lot of us lost the jobs that we depend on to feed our families because you think raising money for government is more important than letting it work in the economy. We don’t think that cutting special deals with plaintiff lawyers, reluctant Senators, unions or big banks with our money just so you can buy their votes has helped us as much as it has helped you. And, for Pete’s sake, we don’t think that the answer to every problem we face is shifting more of our earnings to the 40% of the population who don’t pay any income taxes at all

Just for good measure you might explain again how wrong it was to ridicule those of us who clutch our “guns and bibles” and admit that the people you seem to so despise are the very same people who win our wars, build our cities and yes, pay your salary. Admit to us that you’ve spent too much time listening to others in Washington and too little time listening to us. Stop scheming and stop treating us like sheep that can be ever more efficiently sheared to advance your own ambitions.

If you really want to understand, however, what the middle class and most of the rest of us really think, go get some ham and eggs and save the money of the commission. I’m sure that we could make better use of those funds–another thing you need to come to understand.