Washington politicians turn on the middle class, with no sign of relief

To paraphrase Winston Churchill’s speech following the Battle of Britain and apply it to the Congressional debt debacle in DC, never have so many owed so little to so few.

Faced with potential default, a thorny problem of their own creation, our national leaders did what they do best — nothing. Most importantly, they postponed doing nothing until after the 2012 elections.

They formed a “super committee” to meet to discuss maybe doing something in the next decade, and so insured that they will be able to threaten benefits we already paid for and paydays for our troops. They’ll do all this while saddling the next three generations with crushing debt and an unintelligible tax code and claiming that they’re conducting the peoples’ business. To add insult to injury, Congress will now treat us to the spectacle of patting one another on the back over the great job they did to avoid financial catastrophe, albeit solely as the result of public indignation over their political maneuvering instead of problem solving.

Of course, what Congress has done will soon enough be revealed as creating yet another set of problems they can rail against and posture about while boldly denying any complicity in creating them. Watch the Democrats claim they saved Social Security, a prepaid (by us) benefit that even a retired, non-public-employee economist would admit requires thoughtful reform to ensure its future viability. Watch Republicans don the mantle job-creating saviors, while actually creating more complex tax loopholes to ensure their patrons continue to party on the Riviera, while Mom and Pop businesses collapse under red tape.

Watch Wall Street reap billions while creating nothing of use, as it continues without appropriate regulation. Watch both parties stack the “super committee” with their most appealing, least powerful, members to serve as whipping boys for future inaction.

The civil rights movement of the 1960s, which continues today, gained traction and critical mass as a result of government inaction in the face of abuse and disenfranchisement of people of color, a significant percentage of our population.

Nowadays, it seems the middle class, of all colors, is the significant group being abused by a disengaged government. Congress is alarmingly close to killing the middle class with taxation, inaction, global adventurism, cronyism, obfuscation of the processes of government and political posturing as poor substitutes for governing. I think Congress will continue in this vein until enough people take a stand, as they did in the ’60s, to forcefully demand change.

Jim Cartwright, Canfield