Obama Will Raise Your Taxes, Despite Campaign Promise

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As an American living in Europe, I have come to appreciate how I can decide how much I spend and where my money goes at the end of the day. My hostfamily does not see half of the money that was in their job contracts and the schools and universities are falling apart. They have to wait for months to get simple outpatient surgeries. AND they pay 8 times our gas rates. Where does their money go?! When the same thing starts happening to our money and you can't get a precancerous mole taken off for 14 months because a rush of 46 million previously uninsured people need care, I will only say i told you so. Cherish being able to choose where your money goes. p.s. to the European who said we should ride bicycles to get rid of our excess fat... Europe is not far behind.

Lauren 4:11AM July 17, 2009

The poor don't have any benefits to tax. That's the point of SCHIP and the public option plan.
So you think Obama will be the first person since...George HW Bush...to raise taxes against campaign promises. And before him Reagan.

Steve of NJ 8:59PM June 17, 2009

Americans somehow must pay back their debts. Individually they must, but also as a country. Perhaps they should pay more for their gasoline, like we do in Europe. Let the US Federal Governmemt slash on a dollar tax on each gallon of gas. This will not raise the price close to what we Europeans are paying, but it is a start to fight your deficit.
Such a price rise will perhaps pay of a little of the US debts, but more importantly it may have the other effects. Less mileage driven by your gas guzzling cars, people will walk and ride bicycles more and perhaps loose some of their excess fat, but more importantly it will force you to buy more economic cars. Time is up for 8 cylinder trucks. It will now be 4 cylinder rabbits.
We are at peak oil anyway. If the government won't raise the price of gas, your oil companies will do anyway. So, happy walking.

Jaap Ketel 3:20AM June 12, 2009

Obama has sure gone a long way with all of his deficit spending. He is a star at lying to everyone about what he will or won't do. Take your pick. People hear what they want to hear.
He did say that he would not raise taxes. He will soon. There is no way he can spend like he is without it. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional and has been drinking the kool-aid.
Makes perfect sense though. Raise taxes when the economy is down. Make the recession/depression worse.
Remember when the government (often state) were encouraging us to drive less to save money?
Well gee, state revenues are down, now so we need to raise taxes to make up for it.
Brilliant. Government never can cut their spending. Look at California. Didn't they recently approve spending $10 billion on a monorail system? Can't even pay their police and teachers but oh give us the monorail!
Socialism fails when they run out of other people's money.

Nick Danger of CO 2:55PM June 11, 2009

We should call you “Nostro-Bonnie”, predicting the future and all.
Obama will raise my taxes? We’ll see, but no amount of fear mongering is going to make your statement any more or less true.
Hacks are always left to nit-pick.....

ApostasyUSA of CA 2:46PM June 11, 2009

Anyone paying attention to the details when Obama gave his acceptance speech in Denver knew this is the case. When you let everyone at the table order whatever they want, the bill still shows up at the end of the evening.

Brad of TX 1:58PM June 11, 2009

Don't always point to Obama. He's just trying to fix the mess made during the Bush years.
Remember the surplus at the end of the Clinton years? Yes - that was a fine time. Then Bush came in, cut taxes, refunded money, gobbled up the surplus, started a war of choice, spent like a drunk on no-bid defense projects, and deregulated us into the dumpster. Like the spoiled child from a priviledged family that he was, Bush knew how to spend, but not how to pay for his pet projects. The rest of the Republicans rubber-stamped everything he proposed, and accused everyone who disagreed of being "un-American".
We can return taxes to the levels in place when Reagan was president - the Republicans think everything Reagan did was golden...and they claim how well we had it then. Well OK. Let's pony up as we were willing to in the 1980's - when defense spending was WAY LOWER. Let's cut defense spending to those levels - at the height of the cold war....and still lower than now.
Muser is right. Too much unrealistic expectation that our roads wil be paved, our police coverage will be adequate, our fire, our military, our weapons of mass destruction will be more massively destructive, our senior care will remain comparable to other western countries, all without paying taxes.
Obama is not the source of the problem. He is working on the solution. The change he is offering is to stop having all the burden placed on regular folks - as the Repoublicans have done the past ten years.

Dorfy of SC 12:13PM June 11, 2009

Obama SHOULD get taxes raised---so that your dollar does not fall sharply in value and get replaced as the world's "reserve currency". America CANNOT sustain infinite deficits. There is already talk of whether the U.S. Government deserves a continued triple-A credit rating----and by any objective measure, it does not.
Some say, "oh, just cut the spending". Ain't gonna happen. CANNOT happen in the American political environment.
So where to raise? Top end income taxes, retaining estate taxes, ending a far-too-favorable treatment of "capital gains".
As for the tax-free status of employer-provided health care, this never was fair or proper to begin with. It never was fair, for instance, to self-employed people. BUT, regardless of what Bonnie says here, Obama is not going to target it for any modest-income people.

Muser of NM 11:28AM June 11, 2009