Remember when candidate Obama declared unequivocably that in his adminstration, there would be no tax increases for anyone making less than $250,000 per year? If not, here are his exact words:
And I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase–not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital-gains taxes, not any of your taxes
Orszag: There Was No Promise
Sounds pretty ironclad, doesn’t it? Well, at a breakfast earlier this week, White House Budget Director Peter Orszag said that the president’s promise wasn’t really a promise after all. It was merely a “stance” or a “preference” that will be studied by this brand new Commission on Fiscal Responsibility. You know, the commission that won’t release its findings until after the November elections. So, you see, candidate Obama wasn’t promising anything of the sort. It was only a preference subject to a commission telling him that he really has to find somewhere a whole lot of money to cover the monstrous deficit—and the only way to do that will be to raise taxes.
Remember also the promise that the healthcare bill wouldn’t add a dime to the deficit? The Congressional Budget Office has just released new figures: it seems they miscalculated by a measly $115 billion the last time they were asked. Surprise! There are no savings in the bill. In fact, this is probably just the beginning of the “miscalculations.”
Those are a lot of dimes.
When the push was on to force the bill through the Congress, the pressure was put on the CBO to come up with favorable figures. I don’t know if they were being dishonest or not, but to give the benefit of the doubt, they were at least in a hurry to do their calculations.
As for the Obama administration itself, I have no qualms about calling this as dishonest as his pledge not to raise taxes. This goes beyond simple dishonesty; this is a complete lack of integrity. At this point, only a fool would continue to trust the president’s words.