THEY CAN AT LEAST GIVE US TIPS ON HOW TO AVOID PAYING OUR TAXES:

Obama's Middle-Class Task Force Has No Middle Class (Claire Suddath, Mar. 04, 2009, TIME)

[T]he middle class may have a better shot at making ends meet than at influencing the Middle Class Task Force. That's because no member of the Middle Class Task Force is actually middle class. While defining America's most beloved demographic group has never been an exact science, most academics agree that the term refers to anyone earning between $30,000 and $100,000 a year. (Median household income in the U.S. hovers around $50,000.) Every member of the President's task force — from Biden ($227,000) to Council of Economic Advisors chair Christina Romer ($172,000) to energy secretary Steven Chu ($191,000) — makes well over $150,000, putting them in the top 5% of wage earners. (See pictures of crime in Middle America.)

While middle class Americans are invited to submit questions and ideas through the task force's website, AStrongMiddleClass.gov and tickets for the Philadelphia meeting were distributed to labor and environmental groups, the task force did not accept questions from the audience. "If Biden and his team want to go into this [middle class issue]," said Daniel Morris, the Drum Major Institute's communications director, "They're going to need to talk to real members of the middle class. There's no substitute for immediate intimate interaction."

Instead, the task force talked to Pennsylvania governor Edward Rendell ($175,000), Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter ($167,000) and United Steelworkers of America president Leo Gerard, (who reportedly earns over $170,000).