Let me see if I am following the plot correctly.
Wealthy banks wreck the economy by engaging in irresponsible speculation on sub-prime mortgages. When the bubble finally collapses, lots of non-wealthy people lose their homes and get thrown out on the street.
The recession which follows destroys millions of jobs and massively swells the ranks of the unemployed. The wealthy largely glide through it, while the decidedly non-wealthy unemployed burn through what little savings they have, often on the way to bankruptcy and destitution.
The government barely raises a finger to help the unemployed because, well, that's socialism or something. But, for reasons unknown, the national debt is suddenly public enemy number one. So now we're talking about raiding Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, programs vital to letting workers, the unemployed, and particularly the poor live with some basic financial security. Programs vital, in many cases, even to their survival.
Meanwhile the wealthy coast right through that too. Any attempt to ask the wealthy to pay a bit more out of their abundance (affecting their standard of living hardly at all) so that we don't have to bleed the people who can afford it the least prompts a blast of incoherent rage from Republicans, because, well, that's socialism or something.
So in effect, we're demanding that the very people who have suffered the most from the catastrophe that the wealthy created suffer still more -- give up whatever tattered shreds of our social safety net onto which they may be clinging -- so that we can avoid asking anything at all of the wealthy who got us into this in the first place.
It's insane, perverse, unconscionable that we're even talking about cutting into Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. It's even worse that our Democratic President, who campaigned on a message of hope and empowerment, is proposing doing so, then casting this betrayal of the American people as a matter of taking on "sacred cows", as if these programs were left-wing toys rather than the vital, life-preserving institutions they are.
This isn't "shared sacrifice". This is feudalism.
