http://dailycaller.com/2010/02/18/white-house-begins-spade-work-to-avoid-blame-for-tax-increases/
President Obama on Thursday indicated that tax increases on people who make less than $250,000 a year will be on the table when a deficit commission makes its recommendations later this year on how to resolve the nation’s fiscal imbalances.
“Everything’s on the table. That’s how this thing is going to work,” Obama said Thursday, moments after signing an executive order creating the 18-member commission.
But the White House has already begun to lay the groundwork for their argument that such a recommendation by the panel should not be blamed on the president, who vowed during his campaign not to raise taxes on Americans earning less than $250,000.
“The president will not sit on the commission and the options they present will not necessarily reflect administration policy,” a White House official told The Daily Caller.
So tax increases for the middle-class are on the table, but if he signs them into law it isn't his fault. That's a position only an academic fence-straddler could love. And it's a position that only a self-delusional fool would think we believe for a moment.
But be that as it may, are tax increases likely to come from this panel that he created by Executive Order? Yes, they're far more likely than spending cuts.
Many economic experts see no alternative to raising taxes across the board in order to reduce the federal deficit, which is projected to hit $1.6 trillion this year.
Conservatives, however, see the problem mostly as a spending problem, and are skeptical of the president’s commission because they believe it will inevitably lead to higher taxes.
Rep. Tom Price, Georgia Republican and head of the Republican Study Committee, called the panel “a political solution to a glaring math problem.”
“Since the president has unfairly given Democrats and liberals an over representation on the commission, the odds are high that its recommendations will be heavy on tax increases and light on spending reductions,” Price said.
So yes, the panel is likely to recommend tax increases on the middle-class, and yes, PresBo would probably sign them into law. But it won't be his fault, we're told... I guess he forgot that little four-letter word: VETO!
The only up-side is that the recommendations on the panel aren't binding, and Congress can ignore them completely.
Look, the problem we have with our budget and our national debt was caused by Congress spending more money than the government saw in tax revenues. PresBo and the Democrats want to fix that problem by keeping our spending where it is, mostly, and increasing taxes to pay for it. But elected officials have little fiscal discipline in normal times. A politician friend of mine once told me "We can ALWAYS spend more money!" And that's what will happen... taxes will go up and spending will continue to rise... and at that point we're sunk.
In order to balance this thing out, start paying down our national debt, and charting a sustainable course into the future, we must begin to curtail spending. And since a very large portion of federal spending goes to entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, that means we have to start reigning in those costs. Raising taxes will just get us into more trouble UNLESS we get spending under control FIRST.
This budget reduction panel will consist of six Congressional Democrats, six Congressional Republicans, and four Presidential appointees. And since those appointees will be, in all likelihood, Democrats (and liberal ones, too), that means the tax-raisers will be in control of the panel. And that's a bad thing.
But when the tax increases on the middle-class start to be pushed, just remember who broke his promise not to let that happen.
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