Remember Joe the Plumber? He was the blue-collar dude who confronted Barack Obama late in the 2008 campaign with this challenge: "Your new tax plan's going to tax me more, isn't it?" Nonsense, replied the candidate: "From 250 [thousand dollars a year] down, your taxes are going to stay the same." Indeed, he insisted, 95 percent of "working people" would see their taxes go down in his administration.Well, think again.
A year into his presidency, Obama now says he's "agnostic" on what was the principal plank in his economic platform: No tax hikes for individuals making $200,000 a year or less -- or for households with a combined annual income under $250,000.
The president is about to appoint a task force (not another one!) to study reining in the national deficit -- and, he says, "what I want to do is to be completely agnostic in terms of solutions." Meaning, says Obama, that he "can't set the whole thing up where a whole bunch of things are off the table."
Including his once-sacred tax pledge.
Read the rest of this New York Post editorial here.
