Timothy Geithner Won’t Rule Out a Middle Class Tax Increase

  I know that I don’t need to remind anybody that when he was running for president Barack Obama promised  that 95% of Americans would receive a tax cut and that nobody making under $250,000 would receive a tax increase. Many of us knew that this was bullshit, the president just couldn’t fund all of his policies and not raise taxes. The numbers just did not add up. But many people wanted to believe him so they voted for him anyway.

  Recently Timothy Geithner was asked if Barack Obama would have to break his promise not to raise taxes on the middle class and he refused to say no. He was given several opportunities to say that the president would stand by his word, he declined.

To get the economy back on track, will President Barack Obama have to break his pledge not to raise taxes on 95 percent of Americans? In a “This Week” exclusive, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told me, “We’re going to have to do what’s necessary.”

  Certainly not a resounding no, now was it? But I take issue with the first paragraph of this article on another issue. Barack Obama has already broken his promise not to raise taxes on those making under $250,000 when he raised the cigarette tax, this was a tax on ALL smokers regardless of income level. While it was not a tax increase on all middle class families it was a tax increase on some.

  That aside, back to the issue at hand.

He then goes on to say the following:

We have to bring these deficits down very dramatically,” Geithner told me. “And that’s going to require some very hard choices

  Those “hard choices” certainly sound like tax increases on people who were promised tax breaks, a reversal of a campaign promise. But I do have one question. Who is responsible for those record deficits that Timothy Geithner is now saying that we have to reduce? That would be President Obama, who faced with deficits left by the Bush administration did nothing to bring them down and in fact increased them with spending that the United States couldn’t afford in the first place. Now the administration is possibly going to raise taxes on the middle class because they couldn’t control their spending when the money wasn’t there? We now have to sacrifice for this administration’s lack of self control?

  I wish that I could say that I am surprised that Obama may be open to the “hard choice” of raising taxes on the middle class but I am pretty sure that I warned anyone who would listen that this was going to happen.

  I remember President Bush the elder staring at the television screen and saying “read my lips, NO NEW TAXES!” before he raised taxes. This was THE reason that I did not vote for him in his re-election bid, I do not vote for anyone who raises taxes on anyone. And I believe this is the major reason why he did not get re-elected.

  If President Obama breaks his promise to the middle class it will be interesting to see if they hold him to the same standards that they held the first President Bush to.