Today in Washington, D.C. - Feb 11, 2010 - Obama Considers More Income Tax Hikes

Senate will reconvene at 2:30 PM today. House is Out! On Tuesday, Democrats failed to get the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture on the nomination of former SEIU lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board by a vote of 5-33 with two democrats joining the Republican opposing the nomination. Note: once it was clear the nomination was defeated; 15 Senators did not even vote. Maybe five other Democrats wanted to hide their voting against the president nomination. Becker’s nomination is controversial because of concerns that Democrats want to enact parts of their stalled card check bill through the regulatory process on the NLRB. Also on Tuesday, the Senate confirmed Joseph Greenaway as a judge on the 3^rd Circuit Court of Appeals by a vote of 84-0. One of many confirmed; one rejection. Now President Obama threatens recess appointments including appointing Craig Becker. I guess the SEI Union pockets do run deep and maybe they they even have more than the ear of President Obama.

Bloomberg News reports today, “President Barack Obama said he is ‘agnostic’ about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit. . . . Obama repeatedly vowed during the 2008 presidential election campaign that he would not raise taxes on individuals making less than $200,000 and households earning less than $250,000 a year.”

And this isn’t the first time the Obama has signaled he could support tax increases that violate his pledge. In December, the health care reform bill passed by Senate Democrats and supported by Obama included provisions that were likely to increase taxes on Americans making less than $200,000. A number of Democrats even acknowledged this by voting for a Republican amendment that would have prevented such tax increases in the bill (54 Democrats ultimately voted to kill the amendment). Not to mention the over $500 billion overall in tax hikes included in the bill.

Yet the administration has repeatedly claimed that President Obama is going to stick to his pledge. Bloomberg notes, “When senior White House economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner suggested in August that the administration might be open to going back on that pledge, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs quickly reiterated the president’s promise.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has warned the White House repeatedly that the middle of a severe recession is not the time to be raising taxes on anyone, much less on middle-class families. New taxes are not going to create the jobs Americans are looking for. He told CNN’s John King recently, “If you’re in business now and you’re trying to figure out what the future is, you’re looking at health care taxes, you’re looking at capital gains taxes going up, dividend taxes going up. If you are a small business and pay taxes as an individual taxpayer, your taxes are going up. So, is that a great environment in which to expand employment? I think the answer is no.”

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