Saturday, May 15, 2010

Read My Lips ... No, Wait, Don't ...

September 12, 2008 - in Dover NH presidential candidate Barack Obama said:
“I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

(quote and video here) (full story here)
May 12, 2010 - in New York, White House Budget Director Peter Orszag described Obama’s pledge as a “stance” and a “preference:”

“The president has been very clear about what he prefers,” Orszag said under questioning from Thomson Reuters’ Chrystia Freeland. “That was his stance during the campaign, and he still believes that’s the right course forward. But he has also been very clear that we shall let the commission (the president’s newly formed bipartisan Commission on Fiscal Responsibility) go do its work.”

(link here)
In a masterpiece of understatement, Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), a member of both the House Budget Committee and the aforementioned Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, said “It appears that the president’s ‘promise’ is being morphed into a ‘preference.’

So if I understand this right, obama's firm pledge is subject to being overruled by a committee that he formed. That's a classic bureaucratic CYA move - "I was against it, but it was the committee's decision."

Even NPR (!) points out that this is a bit of a flip-flop on obama's part.

We'll see how this plays out, and how the lame-stream media covers it. But for now, I am reminded of Rep. Joe Wilson's shout of "You lie!" during an obama speech on 9/9/09 to Congress. It seems Mr. Wilson was not only right then, but also prescient.

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