Run by a nonprofit aimed at middle-class seniors, Flushing House attracts Queens's retired cops and teachers.
Inherent in their progress from the bottom of the totem pole as freshman to upper class seniors, are expectations.
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Yet the Obama budget eliminates the recent automatic cuts to the Pentagon budget, even as it cuts Social Security and increases Medicare premiums for middle-class seniors.
But what we should not do is take action that does harm to our economy, does harm to our middle class, does harm to our seniors and only does well by the well-off and well-connected in order to address a deficit challenge that can be addressed appropriately in a balanced way that grows the economy, helps the middle class, and protects our seniors.
And yet the current Republican plan puts the burden of avoiding those cuts mainly on seniors and middle-class families.
Will it be only the middle class and seniors that have to ensure that our deficits and debt come down?
And it would also mean asking sacrifice of seniors and the middle class and the poor, while asking nothing of the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations.
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It would do it in a way that would protect seniors and middle-class families, and not ask them to bear the sole burden of the need to reduce our deficit.
To win 270 Electoral College votes, he will have to keep Republicans energized, increase his support among independents, seniors and the middle class, and make inroads among Hispanics and young voters.
But he will not accept a deal that, in order to protect some of the wealthiest Americans from having their taxes go up, shifts the burden unduly onto seniors and the middle class.
He is willing to make hard choices, however, but he will make hard choices that make sense for the economy and for our seniors and our middle class and our students and families with disabled children.
It has to have enough revenue from those who can afford it, and a mix of spending cuts that do not unduly put the burden on seniors or the middle class or students or families who have children with disabilities.
So he is open to new ideas, but he will not accept a proposal that has some vague promise of revenues produced from closing loopholes and limiting deductions from the wealthy that is coupled with very concrete burdens placed on the middle class and seniors.
The President is willing to make tough choices, but he cannot ask the middle class and seniors to bear all the burden for deficit reduction and to sacrifice while millionaires and billionaires and special interests get off the hook -- are let off the hook.
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And it represents his belief about how we can achieve the kind of revenue that's necessary for a balanced package in a way that ensures that we don't put all the burden for long-term deficit reduction on seniors or the middle class or other vulnerable communities.
We hope that Congressional Republicans back off their insistence of putting the entire burden of reducing the deficit on the backs of the middle class and seniors because, as the President said on Tuesday, the true economic engine in this country is a thriving and rising middle class.
We simply hope that Republican leaders in Congress acknowledge the fundamental fact that rates have to go up on the top 2 percent in order to make sure that a deal is balanced and doesn't leave the middle class or seniors bearing the burden of these important economic goals.
"In naming Congressman Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney has chosen a leader of the House Republicans who shares his commitment to the flawed theory that new budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy, while placing greater burdens on the middle class and seniors, will somehow deliver a stronger economy, " it said in a statement.
There is either an option that says dealing with our deficits and debt, the responsibility for that should be borne entirely almost by the middle class and seniors and folks who depend on programs like Medicaid, or it should be borne evenly in a balanced way, which is what the President believes.
But we are not willing to accept the "my way or the highway" approach backed by Congressional Republicans that asks the middle class and seniors to bear all the burden while the very wealthiest individuals, big corporations and oil and gas companies continue to enjoy big tax loopholes that are unavailable to middle class Americans and small businesses.
So we would clearly -- we want to see the debt ceiling sort of removed from the process of the very important debates that we have over what we pay for, how much revenue we bring in, how we get our fiscal house in order in a way that helps the economy grow, protects vulnerable citizens, seniors and middle-class families and moves the country forward.
Republicans should have, in our view, done what they had done just a few months before, which is pass a short-term measure to delay implementation of the sequester, a measure that would have represented the balance that the public supports, asking the well-off and well-to-do to pay a little bit, not just seniors and middle-class families, and that then regular order could have continued as it is now, but without the sequester.
Are we going to do it by asking sacrifice only of middle-class Americans or seniors, parents of children who are disabled?
But that is the only deal that's available that would protect the middle class, protect seniors, and ensure that our economy continues to grow.
And what strikes me about the House Republican budget proposal is that it puts the burden on seniors, on the middle class, on the disabled.
It requires a deal that does not unduly put the burden on seniors, or middle-class Americans, or families with children of disabilities, or kids trying to go to college.
That's the way to ensure that in dealing with our fiscal challenges, we do not ask, as the Republican plan does, that the burden of meeting those challenges falls solely on middle-class Americans, seniors, the parents of children with disabilities, and others.
Because he will not accept a deal that has specific cuts in spending, specific cuts in entitlement programs that asks middle-class Americans, seniors, college students who need loans, families with disabled children to sacrifice, to pay a price, on the one hand, and the promise -- the vague promise, the unspecified promise -- of some magical revenue that will appear from wealthier Americans in the future.
Mary Morrison, who has taught a personal finance class to Stanford University seniors for 13 years, has seen it all.
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But what I can't do is ask middle-class families, ask seniors, ask students to bear the entire burden of deficit reduction when we know we've got a bunch of tax loopholes that are benefiting the well-off and the well-connected, aren't contributing to growth, aren't contributing to our economy.
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