I understand why he might want to avoid doing so, but this is a little disappointing:

Apparently Joss Whedon was going to have Captain America give a speech in The Avengers that would have been partially about the loss of the social safety net, but he decided to cut the scene:

One of the best scenes that I wrote was the beautiful and poignant scene between Steve and Peggy [Carter] that takes place in the present. And I was the one who was like, 'Guys, we need to lose this.' It was killing the rhythm of the thing. And we did have a lot of Cap, because he really was the in for me. I really do feel a sense of loss about what's happening in our culture, loss of the idea of community, loss of health care and welfare and all sorts of things. I was spending a lot of time having him say it, and then I cut that.

As a product of the New Deal, Cap's speech would have flow entirely in character. I can believe that the soapbox speech might have killed the flow of the movie and i'm sure Marvel/Disney didn't need the PR headache. But it would have been cool. Maybe for the DVD.