Obama Won't Rule Out Middle Class Tax Hike

George Stephanopoulos reports on his interview with Obama lackey David Axlerod:

White House senior adviser David Axelrod said the president won't rule out a health care reform bill that includes a middle-class tax hike.

"The president had said in the past that he doesn't believe taxing health care benefits at any level is necessarily the best way to go here. He still believes that," Axelrod told me on This Week, "But there are a number of formulations and we'll wait and see. The important thing at this point is to keep the process moving, to keep people at the table, to the keep the discussions going. We've gotten a long way down the road and we want to finish that journey."

I pressed Axelrod on whether Obama will draw a line in the sand and veto any bill that funds health care reform with tax hikes for people making under $250,000 a year -- despite a pledge Barack Obama made during the 2008 presidential campaign not to raise taxes on the poor and middle-class.

"One of the problems we've had in this town is that people draw lines in the sand and they stop talking to each other. And you don't get anything done. That's not the way the president approaches us. He is very cognizant of protecting people -- middle class people, hard-working people who are trying to get along in a very difficult economy. And he will continue to represent them in these talks," Axelrod said.

"But they're also dealing with punishing health care costs, and that's something that we have to deal with."

The argument from Obama is that health care, if unchecked by a government plan, will bankrupt the country. However, as Don Surber points out, government-run health care is already bankrupting the country:

One of the oddities about nationalizing health insurance — through the cynical offering of a public option — is that government-run health insurance is already wrecking the budgets of the federal and state governments.

Entitlements wrecked the federal budget, where $2 of every $3 spent now goes to entitlements.

If you eliminated military spending and all other discretionary spending (federal courts, the White House — all that) the federal budget still would not balance.

Our seed corn is gone, gobbled by free Hoverounds for retirees, regardless of their wealth.

OK, that is an exaggeration. It’s not the Hoverounds. It’s the nursing homes, the public housing, the free rent for meth labs… good intentions pave the highway to hell.

And drain the treasury.

$1 of every $5 that states spend now goes to Medicaid and other state health programs. States are stuck. For every $1 they cut in Medicaid, up to $4 is cut because you lose the federal matching money.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson and a Democratic Congress really screwed the nation’s economy in 1965 by passing Medicare and Medicaid.

All of Obama's promises have expiration dates. He's already passed a middle class tax hike in the form of the cap-and-tax bill (which hopefully will die in the Senate), so we know he's not shy about breaking the promise to middle class wage earners.