Promises are meant to be broken: budget includes back-door taxes for middle class
[See UPDATE below.]
Sadly enough, this comes as no surprise whatsoever:
The Obama administration’s plan to cut more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade relies heavily on so-called backdoor tax increases that will result in a bigger tax bill for middle-class families.
In the 2010 budget tabled by President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year — effectively a tax hike by stealth.
The article (by non-conservative Reuters, by the way) goes on to describe the many ways in which this would happen.
It seems that, the more Obama emphasized a certain fact in his campaign and/or the early days of his presidency—“The proceedings will be televised on C-SPAN;” “If you make less than $250,000 you will not see your taxes go up”—the more likely he is to do exactly the opposite. In addition, he attempts to accomplish this without stating that he is reversing himself, and in a hidden manner (as the article puts it “by stealth”).
“Back-door,” indeed. And if anyone is so bold as to challenge him about what he’s doing, he denies, lies, twists, and blames—sometimes all at once.
As I’ve said before: presidents lie, and break promises as well. Obama is not the only one. But he is the most blatant, shameless, repetitively lying president ever, deeply mendacious about the most important facts of his program and his character.
[ADDENDUM: The Reuters story has been withdrawn. A new one is slated to appear next week. I had linked to the Canadian version of the story, which is still up as of this moment.
Very interesting development. It could be due to something innocuous. Or the Reuters folks might have found a horsehead or two in their beds.]
[UPDATE: The Reuters story has itself become The Story. Word is that it contained errors of fact, and was pulled at the White House’s request. Reuters writes:
The Feb 1 story headlined “Backdoor taxes to hit middle class” is wrong and has been withdrawn. The story said lower-income families will pay more under tax provisions scheduled to expire Dec 31. The Obama administration’s budget calls for the extension of those tax provisions for households earning less than $250,000. There will be no substitute story.
That sounds like a major mess-up by both the writer and whatever fact-checkers might still reside at Reuters. Obviously, if the entire premise on which the story is based is incorrect the piece should never should have run in the first place, and a retraction is necessary. If a blogger had made such a faux pas, the mistake would be ascribed to lack of professionalism, and contrasted to the skill of the press. Now we can say that it is evidence that standards in journalism have fallen pretty low.
But of course, we already knew that. The unusual thing about this story is that the errors went against Obama, and they seem to have been fairly egregious.
However, was everything in the original article incorrect, or just some of it? It’s hard to know, because the original story has been pulled. But Powerline quoted quite a bit from it, and as best as I can tell from a quick perusal, the bulk of the assertions in the Reuters article did seem to refer to those now-non-expiring tax cuts. If so, then Reuters was correct to pull it, and the Obama administration was correct to call attention to the mistakes.
Of course, we know that it’s not unusual for articles in the MSM to contain errors both large and small. However, it’s rare for them to be pulled in this way. Would Reuters have done the same for a similar article about Bush? And would Bush have asked them to do so?]
OK, I just have to say it:
Obama . . .
Liar, liar
Pants on fire!
The White House forced Reuters to make a retraction.
Neo
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100202/bs_nm/us_budget_backdoortaxes
Truth be told – there was a typo 🙂
It looks Obama is doing what he should been doing all along for his agenda, sugar coating poison pills.
Thanks. I just added an addendum about the withdrawal.
What next? He’ll admit he can’t really make the oceans recede?
Seriously, how many of us can now relate to Cassandra? It was obvious right out of the chute that this was going to happen, indeed, had to happen. Yet our friends on the left seem not to have quite figured any of this out. Amazing.
I’m voting for a horse head or two.
It’s amazing how fast the Obami can react when someone says something adverse to their interests, but days will pass after an al-Qaeda terrorist almost kills three hundred people on the Christmas holiday and cause burning debris to rain down on a major American city.
And there is much they still haven’t explained about that.
Irony of all ironies! When I clicked the Canadian link, I saw a link to this story on the left side of the page: Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams is set to undergo heart surgery this week in the United States.
Sorry about that, Neo. When I saw that the link was defective I went to correct it and then saw your story about it. Nevermind!
Very interesting development. It could be due to something innocuous. Or the Reuters folks might have found a horsehead or two in their beds.]
It’s not the horse he once knew.
I heard Rush on this story earlier today, the WH called Reuters to complain.
the WH called Reuters to complain.
Complain it was untrue or complain that they let the cat out of the bag?
I don’t think we can blame the president for this. He stationed himself at the front door, zealously guarding our wallets, and a person or persons unknown sneaked in the back and added some clauses very favorable to certain people. He was doing his best but he can’t be everywhere at once, can he?
The Canadian one’s gone now, too.
It’s still up on Yahoo, but probably not for long. Was linked at the Drudge Report.
Does anyone else find this EGREGIOUS intimidation of the lickspittle press OUTRAGEOUS? And SCARY? My God, if Bush had tried “disappearing” stories from major newswire outlets, the Leftists would be sh****g bricks sideways at warp speed.
This is how they get and keep power. But just try to get the regular Joes and Janes to see it. Most people are more focused on what they’re going to buy at the mall or having their brakes fixed than they are on the tidal wave of debt that’s fixing to drown us all.
I guess the middle class is now making over $250,000 per year. 😉
The Proposals of the Obama admin : “In a recent study an estimated 71,000 Texans will lose their oil and gas jobs if the tax provisions become law. Not only that but more than 1,000 million barrels of crude oil will be prematurely plugged in the U.S., resulting in more than $79 billion going to foreign countries to pay for additional petroleum imports that could have been paid to producers right here on our own turf…” http://www.ketknbc.com/news/budget-bad-texans
“President Obama’s changes to eight oil and gas tax provisions in the federal budget for 2011 will have a $50 billion price tag on it for Texas over the next ten years. Not only that, jobs in oil and gas in Texas could be cut in half. ”
Same link as above
The employees in metal shop where I work- who get most of their buisiness from supporting the oil and gas industry- are not making anywhere near $250,000 a year. Neither are my six cousins who work in the industry.
Wild stuff:
http://video.foxnews.com/#/v/3999151/the-one-thing-22/?playlist_id=87249
I know this is now beyond a cliche, but nevertheless relevant: consider if Bush had called Reuters to complain about a story that made him look bad (Reuters would never publish such, of course, but bear with me). Imagine the uproar, the indignation, and the heated allegations that would ensue.
Anyone who still doesn’t believe that Obama isn’t deliberately targeting the private economy and the middle class for destruction has some splainin’ to do.
Oh, it’s all horseshit! Of course Obama pledged the extension of those tax provisions for households earning less than $250,000.
“If you look at the package that we’ve presented – and there’s some stray cats and dogs that got in there that we were eliminating, we were in the process of eliminating. For example, we said from the start that we pledged to extend those tax provisions for households earning less than $250,000. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge.”
See how that works?
There will be no substitute story.
The employees in metal shop where I work- who get most of their buisiness from supporting the oil and gas industry- are not making anywhere near $250,000 a year. Neither are my six cousins who work in the industry.
Yet, oddly enough, they are still going to get boned (economically speaking) like I would bone one of those blue Avatar supermodel cat-girls.
I pledged not to mention that again, but some stray supermodel cat-girls snuck in and may have violated that pledge.
An amusing thing here is that Obama backed himself into another corner. One of his campaign promises to the lefties was letting the Bush tax cuts expire – for whatever reason that is a big thing to them (never understood that), but oh well.
The idea all along is that even though you will be paying more this isn’t a tax increase, it is simply returning to the level you were supposed to pay. Therefore he could get away with saying that no increased taxes.
Of course, reality is starting to bite and he can’t really do that can he? I can assure you that there are already many people angry of his so called “tax break” wherin you basically can keep more at payday but owe it later (very amusing – one of my co-workers dismissed that as right wing raving trying to bring Obama down – owes 1000 dollars instead of getting back. He stills figures it was right wing raving but there was “some truth in there”).
So, at this point he is trying to save a sinking ship – this is, or rather has, ticked a great deal of his base off. It is just Bush under a different name. He has lost any support from conservatives that had gone with him enough that they just shrug and say “About time he didn’t something right”. Independents mostly do not keep up with politics that close so it is a non-issue (though it would have been a real one if two years running they got a nice big tax bill).
There was no winning scenario here for him and that should have been seen from the beginning. But then again that has been situation normal for this most genius of men, one so smart that we can not even fathom his ability. While he may be so smart that he can play 3-d chess while the rest of us play checkers, it doesn’t help you win a game of checkers and you look foolish trying to put your rook 2 feet above a checker board.
While he may be so smart that he can play 3-d chess while the rest of us play checkers, it doesn’t help you win a game of checkers and you look foolish trying to put your rook 2 feet above a checker board.
Great point and imagery! It works fine if you never let go of it Then instead of a genius at 3d chess, you just look like a dope.
Barry has never figured out that essential truth expressed half a millennium ago by Nicolo Machiavelli: gratitude is the least strongly felt human emotion. Humans are emotionally asymmetric; they’re more pissed off at people who wrong them than they are affectionate toward those who please them.
His failure to grasp that led him into the “Flip-flopper’s Conundrum,” that by working both sides of the street he doesn’t ingratiate himself with both sides, but rather alienates both sides.
While he may be so smart that he can play 3-d chess while the rest of us play checkers
In his dreams. In fact, we’re playing chess, he’s playing tic-tac-toe. And losing consistently.
Does anyone else find this EGREGIOUS intimidation of the lickspittle press OUTRAGEOUS? And SCARY?
Scary is right! Not unbelievable, not a surprise, but pretty scary nonetheless. Is this White House following example set by Hugo?