July 1,
2009
GUEST
EDITORIAL
Obama's 'pledge': We've all been had |
If you voted for Barack Obama for President because you believed his promise not to raise your taxes, you were had.
Here is what Obama said in a campaign stop in Dover on Sept. 12:
"I can make a firm pledge: Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase -- not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.
My opponent can't make that pledge, and here's why: For the first time in American history, he wants to tax your health benefits. ... That will eventually leave tens of millions of you paying higher taxes. That's his idea of
change."
On Sunday, Obama's top political adviser, David Axelrod, said on ABC News' "This Week," that the President was open to taxing health care benefits.
"One of the problems we've had in this town is that people draw lines in the sand, and they stop talking to each other. And you don't get anything
done," Axelrod said. "That's not the way the President approaches
this." Obama himself said, "We have not drawn lines in the
sand."
Isn't a "firm pledge" a "line in the sand?" That's what Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, called it on June 4.
That's what voters believed it was back in September.
Now, Obama is against lines in the sand. Axelrod said on Sunday that Obama doesn't prefer to tax health benefits,
"But there are a number of formulations, and we'll wait and
see."
No, Obama won't "wait and see." He'll accept a tax increase he attacked last fall, just as he has already accepted other tax increases.
On Friday, at Obama's urging, the House passed the cap-and-trade bill described above that raises energy costs by at least $175 a year on every American household.
And Obama has already signed a bill increasing the cigarette tax.
The "firm pledge" was a bald-faced lie. America, you've been had.
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