Now that the new fiscally responsible Congress has addressed the crucial issue of extending tax cuts for the wealthy, it\u2019s time to get down to the real business of further impoverishing America\u2019s middle class. (Motto: \u201cDidn\u2019t we used to be in the middle?\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our national economy continues to perform with the same mix of hope and futility as Hugh Hefner on his wedding night. The latest blow to our flaccid economy: a projected 1.5 trillion<\/em> dollar budget deficit for 2011, nearly a third<\/a> of which goes to pay for continuing the Bush Tax Cuts. (Expect a d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu moment sometime in the near future when Michelle Bachman has a hard time looking you squarely in the eye while calling this Obama\u2019s deficit.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n While we could easily offset those costs with the sale of bumper stickers to Republicans proclaiming, \u201cYou Can Have Your Tax Cuts Back When You Pry Them From My Cold Dead Fingers,\u201d the new Congress has other ideas: on the table<\/a> are Social Security, Medicare, education, social programs, municipal jobs, health care, the home mortgage deduction, and feeding poor people to underground-dwelling Morlocks so they\u2019ll leave us in peace. (One of these may not be true, and don\u2019t assume it\u2019s the obvious one.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words: nothing that would cause our wealthiest citizens to spill their sherry or drop a monocle. Because to ask the nation’s top earners to help trim the deficit\u2014by, say, resuming a tax rate that was temporary anyway and under which America enjoyed unequalled prosperity<\/a>\u2014would be \u201cpunishing success.\u201d And it\u2019s a lot easier to punish those who have enjoyed absolutely no success over the lost decade<\/a> of the Bush presidency and its aftermath, the working middle class. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But help is on the way from President Obama in the form of\u2026 um, looser regulations for business. In his State of the Union address before a united Congress forced to hold hands, Obama distinguished himself as only the second president to avoid using the words \u201cpoverty\u201d and \u201cpoor\u201d in an SOTU address since 1948<\/a>, while pledging to remove \u201crules that put an unnecessary burden on businesses,\u201d and to \u201cknock down barriers that stand in the way of their success<\/a>.\u201d He sure talks funny for a Socialist!<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s just one problem: the only visible barrier standing in the way of business seems to be a giant pile of cash. After growing profits for two years at some of the fastest rates in history, American business had its best earnings ever <\/em>in the third quarter of 2010: more than $1.67 trillion<\/em><\/a>. Yet even with enough stockpiled wealth to dive into and swim around like Scrooge McDuck, businesses refused to hire<\/a> and unemployment remained at roughly 9-1\/2% through the run-up<\/a>, even approaching 10% in November before falling in December, when we needed more part-time Santas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n