I’m reading President Obama op-ed in USA Today about the deficit. If I’m not mistaken, it contains the strange message that he wants the middle class to pay a significant portion of the cleanup costs for a mess they didn’t create.

That’s why people in both parties have suggested that the best way to take on our deficit is with a more balanced approach. Yes, we should make serious spending cuts. But we should also ask the wealthiest individuals and biggest corporations to pay their fair share through fundamental tax reform. Before we stop funding clean energy research, we should ask oil companies and corporate jet owners to give up the tax breaks that other companies don’t get. Before we ask college students to pay more, we should ask hedge fund managers to stop paying taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries. Before we ask seniors to pay more for Medicare, we should ask people like me to give up tax breaks they don’t need and never asked for.

The middle class hasn’t just borne the brunt of this recession; they’ve been dealing with higher costs and stagnant wages for more than a decade now. It’s just not right to ask them to pay the whole tab — especially when they’re not the ones who caused this mess in the first place.

Obviously, it is not right to ask the middle class to pick up the whole tab. What I don’t understand is why Obama thinks this is fair. It’s only logical Obama should be demanding that those who did create the problem should pay the bill.

Since Wall Street caused this recession, we should be demanding only Wall Street pay, especially since Wall Street is flush with cash right now. Saying the struggling middle class should chip in is a terrible message.