I have tried to give the President the benefit of every doubt, but it is difficult to keep doing so when it seems like every week another campaign promise goes up in smoke.
In the latest of a string of broken promises, Mr. Obama went back on his word not to raise taxes on anyone making less than 250k per year. Over and over during the campaign, Mr. Obama the candidate pledged that he would not raise any taxes on people who are not rich, but he recently signed into law the largest tobacco tax in history. A recent Gallup poll confirms that poor and middle class people smoke in much greater percentages than wealthy people, so this tax is not only a breach of his word, but it is actually regressive, i.e. it hurts poor and middle class people much more than it hurts the wealthy.
Some other campaign promises that have similarly gone up in smoke:
- His promise to use public funds for his campaign even though his opponent made good on his promise to do so.
- His promise that he would go "line by line" through every budget to weed out pork barrel spending. The budget he recently signed had nearly 9,000 earmarks.
- His promise to allow the public to review every piece of legislation on-line for at least 5 days before he signed it. The Stimulus Bill was signed without being posted online for 5 days. Similarly the recent Omnibus Land Conversation bill was not posted online before Mr. Obama signed it.
During the campaign there were a lot of promises that there would be 'change' in the way that government is run. I can see that in the area of making and breaking campaign promises, no such change has been forthcoming.
