Obama’s incredible shrinking tax threshold

This article is cross posted at The Partisan Report.

Biden’s telling remark on the all the sudden new tax policy wasn’t a gaffe. This was a Draconian slip especially when considering the chief on the ticket is saying the same thing.

Obama’s middle class tax cut went from those making less than $250,000 a year down to $200,000 and lower to 150,000. In other words and, as predicted, a middle class tax hike along with the already promised on the rich is in the works to pay for the extravagant government spending spree and the New New Deal welfare state.

NRO’s The Corner:

Obama’s position in the past was that he would raise taxes on families making more than $250,000 a year and individuals making more than $200,000. But in his new ad, “Defining Moment,” he seems to lower it to $200,000 for families. “Here’s what I’ll do as president,” Obama says in the ad. “To deal with our current emergency I’ll launch a rescue plan for the middle class That begins with a tax cut for 95 percent of working Americans. If you have a job, pay taxes and make less than $200,000 a year, you’ll get a tax cut.” That seems kind of ambiguous, but the graphic on the screen says clearly: “Famlies making less than $200,000 get tax cut.” Now, the McCain campaign is pointing out something that Joe Biden said in a Pennsylvania TV interview yesterday:

What we’re saying is that $87 billion tax break doesn’t need to go to people making an average of 1.4 million, it should go like it used to. It should go to middle class people — people making under $150,000 a year.”

This morning, in Hershey, Pennsylvania, McCain started pushing hard:

Senator Obama has made a lot of promises. First he said people making less than 250,000 dollars would benefit from his plan, then this weekend he announced in an ad that if you’re a family making less than 200,000 dollars you’ll benefit — but yesterday, right here in Pennsylvania, Senator Biden said tax relief should only go to “middle class people — people making under 150,000 dollars a year.” It’s interesting how their definition of rich has a way of creeping down. At this rate, it won’t be long before Senator Obama is right back to his vote that Americans making just 42,000 dollars a year should get a tax increase. We can’t let that happen.

Folks, Obama is going to lower the threshold once in office. He has to. Otherwise his numbers don’t add up compared to what he wants to spend. By just taxing those above $250,000 doesn’t even reach half the amount needed for his grand ideas.

Besides this has already happened once before with Clinton during his first two years as President with a Democratic controlled Congress.

A recent Wall Street Journal article lays it out in clear detail.

The Clinton years hold some good lessons on both these scores. Back when Mr. Clinton was campaigning for president in 1992, he made a pretty direct pitch: Raise taxes on people making more than $200,000, and use those revenues to fund tax relief for the “forgotten middle class.”

In an October presidential debate, then-Gov. Clinton laid out the marginal-rate increase he wanted and some of his plans for the revenue that would be brought in. He followed with a pledge:

“Now, I’ll tell you this,” he said. “I will not raise taxes on the middle class to pay for these programs. If the money does not come in there to pay for these programs, we will cut other government spending, or we will slow down the phase-in of the programs.”

Mr. Clinton, of course, won that election. And as the inauguration approached, he began backtracking from his promise. At a Jan. 14, 1993, press conference in New Hampshire, he claimed that it was the media that had played up a middle-class tax cut, not him. A month later, he announced his actual plan before a joint session of Congress.

On page one of the New York Times, the paper described the fate of the middle-class tax cut this way: “Families earning as little as $20,000 a year — members of the ‘forgotten middle class’ whose taxes he promised during his campaign to cut — will also be asked to send more dollars to Washington under the President’s plan.”