Do you remember when President George H.W. Bush No. 41 made the promise not to raise taxes (“Read my lips: No new taxes”), but unfortunately was talked into raising taxes and it cost him his re-election bid for a second term?
If President Bush No. 41 can lose a re-election by breaking one promise, how can President Obama win a second term when he has broken a truckload of promises?
Consider only his multiple campaign promises to raise taxes. A few years ago, the Washington Examiner gave a selective list of them:
“It’s true that I want to roll back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans.” Chester, Pa., Oct. 28, 2008“We are going to roll back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans, those making more than $250,000 a year.” Lake Worth, Fla., Oct. 21, 2008“Yes, I’m going to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans.” New Philadelphia, Ohio, Sept. 3, 2008“I think it is very important to roll back the Bush tax cuts on some of the wealthiest Americans.” Chesapeake, Va., Aug. 21, 2008“We’re going to have to roll back the Bush tax cuts on the top one percent.” Fargo, N.D., July 3, 2008“I’m going to roll back the Bush tax cuts back to the levels they were in the 1990s.” Interview with Fox News Channel, June 26, 2008“I will roll back the Bush tax cuts on people making over $250,000.” Watertown, S.D., May 16, 2008“We are going to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.” Raleigh, N.C., May 3, 2008“It is true that I would roll back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans back to the level they were under Bill Clinton.” Fox News Sunday, April 27, 2008“We’re going to roll back the Bush tax cuts on the top one percent.” Lancaster, Pa., March 31, 2008“I want to roll back those Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans.” Youngstown, Ohio, Feb. 18, 2008“Let’s roll back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans.” Washington, D.C., June 19, 2007“I would roll back the Bush tax cuts for those making over $250,000.” Manchester, N.H., June 3, 2007
During the Bush era, such rampant repeat offenses and taxation lies would have led to a presidential ousting from the Oval Office. But for Obama?
And yet, that sampling of broken fiscal pledges is only the tip of the iceberg of our current president’s contemptible record.
Let me remind you of several other core busted promises by Obama – shattered vows right from the horse’s presidential mouth, according to the National Review and other watchdog and news agencies:
- “The first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That’s the first thing I’d do” (spoken on the campaign trail in 2008).
- “Today I’m pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office” (spoken at the opening of Fiscal Responsibility Summit on Feb. 23, 2009).
- “We will launch a sweeping effort to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending in our government, and every American will be able to see how and where we spend taxpayer dollars by going to a new website called recovery.gov” (spoken in a speech on Jan. 28, 2009).
- “There is no doubt that we’ve been living beyond our means and we’re going to have to make some adjustments. Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut” (spoken during the third presidential debate on Oct. 15, 2008.
John Stossel posted this analysis of federal non-defense spending per person
- “We are going to ban all earmarks” (spoken at a press conference on Jan. 6, 2009).
- “Instead of allowing lobbyists to slip big corporate tax breaks into bills during the dead of night, we will make sure every single tax break and earmark is available to every American online” (spoken on campaign trail in June 2007).
- “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase – not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes” (spoken in September 2008 at a town-hall meeting in Dover).
- “[I] will eliminate all income taxation of seniors making less than $50,000 per year. This will eliminate taxes for 7 million seniors – saving them an average of $1,400 a year – and will also mean that 27 million seniors will not need to file an income tax return at all” (from Barack Obama presidential campaign fact sheet in 2008).
- “[My plan] will not help speculators who took risky bets on a rising market and bought homes not to live in but to sell” (spoken to an audience in Phoenix on Feb. 18, 2009).
- “Lobbyists won’t work in my White House” (spoken on his Iowa bus tour on Dec. 15, 2007).
- “We’ve got a philosophical difference, which we’ve debated repeatedly, and that is that Sen. Clinton believes the only way to achieve universal health care is to force everybody to purchase it” (spoken during the Democratic Party presidential debate on Feb. 21, 2008).
- “These negotiations will be on C-SPAN, and so the public will be part of the conversation and will see the decisions that are being made” (spoken on Jan. 20, 2008, and seven other times).
- “The detention facilities at Guantánamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order” (presidential executive order on Jan. 22, 2009).
- “Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe the United States has to be frank with the Chinese about such failings and will press them to respect human rights” (On a fact sheet distributed by the Obama campaign during the 2008 campaign).
- “We need tougher border security, and a renewed focus on busting up gangs and traffickers crossing our border. … That begins at home, with comprehensive immigration reform. That means securing our border and passing tough employer enforcement laws” (spoken in Miami on May 23, 2008).
- “I will make sure that we renegotiate [NAFTA]” (spoken on Feb. 23, 2008).
- And, as long as we’re discussing lies and broken promises, let’s not forget this is the president who promised during his campaign to “clean up both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue” with “the most sweeping ethics reform in history.” He repeatedly pledged that “an Obama administration is going to have the toughest ethic laws of any administration in history.” Doesn’t “toughest ethic laws” include more lies and broken promises?
And President Obama has the audacity to put out a campaign video against Gov. Mitt Romney’s record of “broken promises” as governor of Massachusetts?
In the more than 500 promises Obama made during his campaign and presidency, even the pro-Obama PolitiFact website and its Obamameter has rated his scorecard: 184 promises kept, 60 compromised, 71 broken, 61 stalled, 130 in the works and two not yet rated. What that coddled language boils down to is this: Even according to the political left, Obama has fulfilled 184 promises and left 324 pledges dangling farther than participles!
In 2010, feeling a bit defensive and maybe insecure, Obama fired back in anger to those who were accusing him of selling out by breaking so many of his campaign promises. Wielding his verbose verbal sword, the president retorted, “Take a tally. Look at what I promised during the campaign. There’s not a single thing that I’ve said that I would do that I have not either done or tried to do. And if I haven’t gotten it done yet, I’m still trying to do it.”
“Not a single thing”?
That’s another broken promise.
