Morning Bell: The Obama Middle-Class Tax Hike is Coming

Conn Carroll / August 03, 2009

Campaigning just last year, then-candidate Barack Obama repeatedly promised audiences at campaign stops across the country: “If you’re a family that’s making $250,000 a year or less, you will see no increase in your taxes. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your personal gains tax, not any of your taxes.” But now President Obama is finding that keeping the promises made by candidate Obama is next to impossible. You just can’t borrow a trillion dollars for an economic stimulus, enact a new trillion dollar health care entitlement, and increase discretionary spending by 12% through 2019 (including doubling federal education spending) and then expect to pay for it all by taxing the most productive Americans. Eventually the moment comes when reality catches up to campaigning . That moment is fast approaching.

This weekend on the Sunday talk shows, both Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council Director Larry Summers refused to rule out the possibility that President Obama will raise taxes on the middle class. Secretary Geithner’s middle-class tax hike admission came among the context of deficit reduction on ABC’s This week: (more…)