Last week voters who sent Washington a message to wrestle the spiraling debt under control have gotten a message back from the leaders of a White House budget commission: It'll hurt.  That should read:  it'll hurt the middle class!

A proposal released Wednesday November 10th by the bipartisan leaders of President Barack Obama's deficit commission suggested cuts to Social Security benefits, deep reductions in federal spending and higher taxes for millions of Americans to stem a flood of red ink that they said threatens the nation's very future.  

Interest groups on the right and the left squealed, predictably, about the plan, which would cut total deficits by as much as $4 trillion over the next decade — much of it from programs long considered all but sacred.

Besides Social Security, Medicare spending would be curtailed. Tax breaks for many health care plans, too. And the Pentagon's budget as well in a plan that attaches $3 in spending cuts to every $1 in tax increases.

For all the pain, the deficit still would approach $400 billion in 2015 under the proposal, released by deficit panel's co-chairmen, Democrat Erskine Bowles, a former Clinton White House chief of staff, and Republican Alan Simpson, a former senator from Wyoming.

So I wonder why when talk about cutting the deficit the conversation always includes proposed cuts to Social Security and Medicare when there are many OTHER areas of wasteful spending that can and should be cut??