Another Day, Another Promise Broken

During the campaign, we all heard Obama say over and over again that he would not raise taxes on people making less than $250,000 a year.  George Stephanopoulos, on his “This Week” program, asked Treasury Secretary Giethner if taxes would have to be raised on the middle class to lower the record deficit the Obama administration is creating (transcript of the interview).  Giethner’s response was, “…we’re not at the point yet where we’re going to make a judgment about what it’s going to take.”  Stephanopoulos pressed him saying, “But you’re not ruling it out, you can’t rule it out.”  Giethner replied, “I think what the country needs to do is understand we’re going to have to do what it takes, we’re going to do what’s necessary.”  Apparently, to the Obama administration, doing what’s necessary to reduce the deficit includes raising taxes on the middle class.  I have an idea.  Instead of raising taxes, how about we stop spending TRILLIONS of dollars we don’t have.  I guess that’s not an option.

If Obama tries to raise income taxes on Americans making less than $250k a year, he will have broken what could be considered his most well-known campaign promise.  He is already compiling quite a list of broken promises.               Here are just a few:

1. Transparency in the White House
2. No influence or jobs for lobbyists
3. No signing statements on bills
4. Allow all bills to be viewed on the internet for five days before signing
5. Publicly recognize the Armenian genocide
6. Go through the budget, line by line, to find and remove wasteful spending
7. Abolish income taxes for seniors making less than $50k a year (Technically he hasn’t broken it yet, but I don’t think he is ever going to try for it.)

Then, there is this quote about health care reform from a town hall meeting Obama had in Aug. 2008, “I’m going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We’ll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies — they’ll get a seat at the table, they just won’t be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process.”  I don’t know about the rest of you, but I haven’t seen any big table full of doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, drug companies, insurance companies and Congressional representatives televised on C-SPAN so we, the American people, can see exactly who is arguing for what.  Not only have the American people been shut out of the debate, but Congressional Republicans have been been shut out of large portions of it, too.

I wonder what promise Obama is going to break next?

Related posts:

1. The Immoral and Evil Insurance Companies
2. Sneaky Backdoor Tax Increase on the Middle Class
3. Obama Thinks Doctors are Greedy?
4. How Will Obama’s Health Care Plan Lower Costs?