No guarantee taxes won’t go up
2 Obama administration officials can’t guarantee middle-class Americans won’t see tax hike

Surprise, surprise, surprise!

President Barack Obama’s treasury secretary said Sunday he cannot rule out higher taxes to help tame an exploding budget deficit, and his chief economic adviser would not dismiss raising them on middle-class Americans as part of a health care overhaul.

As the White House sought to balance campaign rhetoric with governing, officials appeared willing to extend unemployment benefits. With former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan saying he is “pretty sure we’ve already seen the bottom” of the recession, Obama aides sought to defend the economic stimulus and calm a jittery public.

Relax folks…it’s only a middle class tax increase…forget about those pesky campaign promises…that was just politics, right?

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council Director Larry Summers both sidestepped questions on Obama’s intentions about taxes. Geithner said the White House was not ready to rule out a tax hike to lower the federal deficit; Summers said Obama’s proposed health care overhaul needs funding from somewhere.

“There is a lot that can happen over time,” Summers said, adding that the administration believes “it is never a good idea to absolutely rule things out, no matter what.”

Even that stronghold of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, the New York TImes (All the news that fits, we print) has checked in on this:

Obama’s Pledge to Tax Only the Rich Can’t Pay for Everything, Analysts Say

Behind Democrats’ struggle to pay the $1 trillion 10-year cost of President Obama’s promise to overhaul the health care system is their collision with another of his well-known pledges: that 95 percent of Americans “will not see their taxes increase by a single dime” during his term.

President Obama has promised that 95 percent of Americans “will not see their taxes increase by a single dime” in his term.

This will not be the last time that the president runs into a conflict between his audacious agenda and his pay-as-you-go guarantee, when only 5 percent of taxpayers are being asked to chip in. Critics from conservative to liberal warn that Mr. Obama has tied his and Congress’s hands on a range of issues, including tax reform and the need to reduce deficits topping $1 trillion a year.

So what’s it mean to the rest of us? BOHICA! (Bend Over Here It Comes Again)