White House Admits Obama Budget Has Middle Class Tax Hike

Last Friday, April 5, White House spokesman Jay Carney confirmed at a press briefing that Barack Obama’s budget would raise taxes on middle class Americans. The confession arose from an exchange between Carney and Major Garrett of CBS News, in which Garrett noted that the implementation of chained CPI as the method of measuring the consumer price index would hurt middle-class Americans:

MAJOR GARRETT, CBS NEWS/NATIONAL JOURNAL:  “A follow-up on Jim’s question — you do not and the White House does not dispute that if the chained CPI were put in — to be put into effect, it would raise taxes on middle-income Americans?”

JAY CARNEY:  The chained CPI, which is a technical adjustment to how we measure the consumer price index —

GARRETT:  But its practical effect would be —

CARNEY:  Again —

GARRETT:  — to raise taxes on —

MR. CARNEY:  I’m not disputing that, but I’m saying that it is not the President’s ideal policy.  It is in a letter from the Senate Minority Leader requesting that it be part of a negotiation deal.

GARRETT:  All right, I’m just saying you don’t disagree, that those things happen?

CARNEY:  Right, but Major, and —

GARRETT:  — a tax increase?

CARNEY:  — let’s be clear, as we’ve said all along, that the offer was on the table.  The President made that offer because he was hopeful that we would see commensurate willingness to compromise from Republicans.  Unfortunately, we haven’t seen that. The President is engaged in conversations with Republicans in the Senate in particular but also in the House in an effort to find common ground, to see if there is a willingness to embrace the idea that we can reduce our deficits in a balanced way and continue to invest in our economy and middle-class families.  And if there is, then we’ll be able to get something done.

GARRETT:  And to critics who would say to this President, looking at this proposal, this is the last and possibly worst time — from their point of view — to raise taxes on the middle class, inflict benefit cuts on elderly on fixed incomes, even in the pursuit of deficit reduction, the President would say what?

CARNEY:  The President would say that as part of a balanced approach that asks the wealthy and well-to-do and well-connected to contribute their fair share through tax reform, elimination of special tax breaks that average folks don’t get, that we can also include entitlement reforms that allow us to achieve deficit reduction in a balanced way and allow us to continue to invest in our economy in ways that will help it grow and create jobs.

When chained CPI is used without a concurrent tax break of equal or greater size, it results in a tax increase. Some estimates of the resultant tax increase from using chained CPI as more than $100 billion in the next ten years.

This is the same Obama whobraggedon January 2, 2013:

I just wanted to take a minute to explain to everyone what we were able to achieve this week. In the face of looming deadlines that would have taken a big chunk out of everyone’s bottom line, you know my top priority has been preventing a tax hike that would have hit 98 percent of all Americans in 2013, because the last thing middle-class families could afford now would be to pay upwards of $2,000 more in taxes this year. . . . We’ve stopped that middle-class tax hike.

Not quite.