That little three-letter conjunction says it all. The answer is no, Obama will not rule out raising taxes on the middle class, regardless of what he said over and over and over during (and after) his campaign. Someone has to pay for the Obamacare monster. After bleeding the 'rich' dry he will have to move on to the middle class, because that's where the money is."The president had said in the past that he doesn't believe taxing health care benefits at any level is necessarily the best way to go here. He still believes that," Axelrod told me on This Week, "But there are a number of formulations and we'll wait and see. The important thing at this point is to keep the process moving, to keep people at the table, to the keep the discussions going. We've gotten a long way down the road and we want to finish that journey."
I pressed Axelrod on whether Obama will draw a line in the sand and veto any bill that funds health care reform with tax hikes for people making under $250,000 a year -- despite a pledge Barack Obama made during the 2008 presidential campaign not to raise taxes on the poor and middle-class.
"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. That's not the way the president approaches us. He is very cognizant of protecting people -- middle class people, hard-working people who are trying to get along in a very difficult economy. And he will continue to represent them in these talks," Axelrod said.
"But they're also dealing with punishing health care costs, and that's something that we have to deal with."[emphasis added]
The punishment, to use Axelrod's word, has yet to begin. An Obamacare tax on top of an all-pervasive (and conveniently invisible) energy tax may be more than our weakened economy will stand.
How far will the Obama administration be able to push it before palpable alarm sets in among taxpayers? The government's lack of restraint may be their undoing. Boiling the frogs is only supposed to work if the heat is turned up slowly and imperceptibly. If you crank it to high the frogs are supposed to jump out, right?
h/t: Hot Air
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A remark I've been seeing more and more is: "Obama's promises come with expiration dates." This assumes that Barack ever means to follow through on anything he says. But, if you make enough empty promises you would accidently follow through on a couple of them.
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