Article first published as Economic War Declared on the American Middle Class on Technorati.

If you’re a middle or working class American, whether or not you accept it, we’re all in the same boat, and we just had a shot fired across our bow. The co-chairs of President Obama’s deficit reduction commission released their initial proposal late last week and made one thing perfectly clear — they believe our nation’s fiscal problems must be corrected on the backs of working Americans.

The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform was created by executive order this past February. The commission’s primary mission was to identify “policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run,” and also to “propose recommendations designed to balance the budget, excluding interest payments on the debt, by 2015.”

It’s difficult to fault either the notion to form the commission or the assigned mission. The group was even structured in a bipartisan manner, requiring that no more than 10 of its 18 members be of a single political party. But if the co-chair proposal is any indication of the content of the final report that’s due for commission vote by December 1, then it’s now evident that class warfare has been waged in America, and the two major political parties have allied against the interests of the majority of citizens.

Fortunately, there may still be hope that this isn’t the case, that the co-chair’s full frontal assault on working Americans will not receive the 14 votes needed to move forward. The proposal, as released, is the work of former Republican Senator, Alan Simpson, and Erskine Bowles, who served as advisor to President Clinton.

Simpson’s politics are certainly no mystery, as evidenced by the abusive e-mail he recently sent to the executive director of the National Older Women’s League where he described Social Security as being “like a milk cow with 310 million tits.” And while Mr. Bowles is purported to be a Democrat, his views put him squarely in the DINO (Democrat in name only) camp. He is an investment banker, formally employed by Morgan Stanley, on whose board he still serves, and the co-creator of his own investment firm.

Whether the severe anti-middle-class slant to the present proposal is upheld by the larger commission or not, there is no escaping the elitist agenda of the co-chairs. Their 10 “Guiding Principles” starts with the solemn acknowledgement that we must “come together on a plan” to “get this crushing debt burden off our back.”  And the second principle is like the first, stating that “A sensible real plan requires shared sacrifice.” But sadly, the Simpson/Bowles idea of who exactly needs to participate in said sharing is limited to middle and working class Americans.

The Simpson/Bowles plan does contain a significant number of spending cuts, with illustrative examples that total over $200 billion in 2015 that are interestingly split between domestic and defense expenditures. And while one might wonder why we can trim only $100 billion from a defense budget that’s over $1 trillion — more than that of all other countries combined — or how adding to unemployment by cutting 440,000 federal jobs is going to help the economy, it’s really the proposal’s tax reform recommendations that expose the co-chair’s corrupt idea of shared sacrifice and total disregard for working Americans.

In order to gain clarity regarding the co-chair’s glaringly regressive economic philosophy, one really need look no further than the “goals” they set forth for tax reform: the first of 7 goals is to “Lower Rates” and at the end, in seventh position is “Reduce the Deficit.” A more upside-down prioritization for a “deficit reduction” commission is hard to imagine, but even worse is the fact the detailed recommendations are heavily skewed toward benefitting the wealthy, with a few bones for the poor and a tab that’s picked up by everyone in the middle.

With working America still struggling in the wake of an economic calamity that stripped away as much as a third of the overall wealth of the middle-class and fed the proceeds to rich Wall Street bankers, Simpson and Bowles actually have the temerity to recommend that the few tax advantages held by the vast middle of American wage earners be ended. This would be bad enough if proposed as the mainstay of deficit reduction, but this is not the case. The dynamic duo would use most of the increased revenue, not to reduce the deficit, but to provide steep cuts to the top marginal and corporate tax rates.

The co-chairs propose to slash taxes for the rich by dropping the top marginal rate from 35% to 23% and the corporate rate from 35% to 26%, the combination of which will ADD tens of billions to the deficit. Their proposal also includes restrictions that will prevent Congress from collecting taxes on businesses, like Exxon which had $42.5 billion in 2009 profits and paid ZERO in U.S. income tax.

But never fear, this pair of elitist scoundrels will pay for their proposed tax breaks by eliminating the home mortgage interest deduction and subjecting healthcare benefits to taxation. They’ll also impose co-pays for veterans who use VA hospitals, raise fees at national parks and start charging admission to the Smithsonian museums, and force college students to make interest payment on loans while still in school. It’s time to bend over middle class, because that upper one 1% now make 23.5% of all U.S. income, and they need a tax break.

The “deficit reduction” label of this proposal is nothing more than a rhetorical smokescreen for the “starve the beast” crowd of conservative ideologues to further their goal of plutocratic rule. The gross concentration of wealth in America already has the top 1% holding more than the bottom 90% — a situation that hasn’t existed since the last time the economy collapsed in such grand fashion — the Great Depression. This proposal will only increase that disparity and hasten the American people’s race to the bottom.

Even after Democratic leadership scaled back its bill to reauthorize several domestic aid programs, reducing its impact on the federal budget deficit by $50 billion, conservative rank-and-file Democrats remain unhappy.

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The Democrats need to reassess who the heck they are. We have to extend unemployment, but that’s really just another short sited solution, another stop-gap. Unless the Democrats engage in an honest debate over priorities and values, we’re doomed to endure an unending flow of half-steps, and in the end — business as usual.

We’re in a freaking recession and we have 30 million Americans out of work. It’s time for the federal government to invest in infrastructure and create JOBS! We’re just going to have to continue deficit spending for some period of time, and the Democrats need to face that. They do need to plan for the end of the deficit, but right now they need to support a bold initiative to commence the new New Deal.

The place to start is with a new energy policy. We need to stop tinkering around the edges and face the issue. We can’t produce enough oil; coal is freaking dirty, and clean coal is too expensive. We should be investing heavily in alternative energy R&D and moving to sustainable sources. In the meantime, nuclear and natural gas are our only options.

President Obama needs to stand up and LEAD. He should be driving us toward energy independence. We need a vision like JFK offered for landing on the moon. We can make it happen, but it will require Americans to join together as we have in the past. This is what real leadership is about.

The obvious truth that the Democrats are too afraid to address is that there are ample financial resources at our disposal, but in order to tap them, they will need to raise taxes on the fat cats who fund their campaigns. We are suffering in the wake of the massive concentration of wealth that’s occurred over the past 30-plus years and it needs to end.

It’s time to restore power to the middle class and remove any of the corporatist pigs who stand in the way. This entire dilemma is manufactured within the political spin machine. When We the People stop the petty debate between us and join together, we’ll topple this tower of corruption and bring a new prosperity to America.

It would be easy for Progressives — even with the best of intentions — to fumble the growing debate on the federal deficit.

Robert Creamer, Political organizer, strategist and author

I wish this article could be mandatory reading for all Americans. It is a lucid narrative describing the current economic situation in the United States and a credible means by which progressives can advance their vision.

Mr. Creamer provides 6 solid rules for how progressives should approach the deficit, starting with the notion that they must acknowledge the inadvisability of protracted long-term deficit spending. In his words, progressives “should make it completely clear that we share the view that long-term deficits must be brought under control — the real question is how.”

On the topic of how, Mr. Creamer suggests that we must select a path based upon how it will affect our success at creating widely shared economic growth. This criterion is not only about how to create the most growth, but also how the growth will be distributed. One of his more salient points is that, “Controlling the long-term budget deficit is not an end in and of itself. It is a means to an end.” Unless you have an aversion to the facts, I think you have to agree with his assertion that the failure of the economic policies of the Bush administration stemmed from a single-minded push to serve only the wealthiest of Americans.

His third rule is to push for more government spending to create jobs. I know that this is difficult for people to swallow, but I agree that it’s exactly what’s needed. Mr. Creamer makes the point that the costs associated with a major portion of our national labor resource sitting idle far outweigh those incurred with running a deficit. I could not agree more. Not only are there the issues of lost goods and services, but also the direct costs of unemployment and welfare, along with other related costs such as crime and lost opportunity.

Rule number 4 speaks to the folly of conservative solutions to bring the deficit back in line. As always, they would have us cut Social Security or education, or anything else that will support further concentration of wealth to the very top. Of course this is exactly the type of wrong-mindedness that got us into our present mess. Cutting Social Security would not only be unethical but would also inhibit senior’s ability to be self-sufficient, which would just shift the costs, not spare them. And cutting education is just plain STUPID. It’s the same sort of myopic insanity that right-wing plutocrats espouse every time they open their mouths. None of the conservative solutions uphold rule #2, which would require that growth be shared.

Mr. Creamer’s rule #5 is so important that I need to quote it straight out: “To assure we meet this test, we must eliminate the confusion between investment and consumption in our federal budget.” The notion that all government spending is equivalent is just plain nonsense. That’s not the way it works in industry, and it shouldn’t be the way it works for government. There is a difference between investment and expenditure. When the federal government invests in things like infrastructure, energy, and research and development, it’s not only providing jobs but also enabling future increases in productivity. This is good medicine for the vast majority of citizens.

The final rule is essentially a call to arms. Progressives must stay on the offensive. Mr. Creamer cites multiple Republican offences of the recent past, including an indictment of the Bush neo-cons who brought us a trillion dollar war and a greed driven bank crash. He also warns that should the Republicans gain full power, they will do everything they can to privatize Social Security, destroy Medicare, and eliminate infrastructure and education spending. His  assessment should scare the conservative right out of you!

These are serious times. We’re bloodied and bruised, but we’ve survived the Bush era. It’s time for all patriotic Americans to unite. We know what the conservative agenda has in store for us. They essentially had carte blanche for the eight years leading up to the Great Recession they caused. Must we learn the lesson yet again? The Republicans want only one thing, and that’s further concentration of wealth amongst the American royalty. Unless you’re already a member, you can either help fight against their unethical advance of plutocracy or you can be their stupefied guppy. The choice is yours.