Poor people understand deficit spending, too

The consequences of long-term deficit spending--whether by the previous administration or this one--are a choice between a crashing currency or significantly higher taxes.

President Obama has repeatedly promised that we can have it all: stimulus spending, two foreign wars, bail-outs for banks and entire industry sectors, and health insurance reform without raising taxes on anybody but Americans who make over $250K.

He's still saying it:

"I have not proposed any plan that would put the burden on middle-class families in order to deal with this'' healthcare plan, Obama told the audience Saturday at a "town hall'' meeting in Grand Junction, Colo. "So when you hear people talking about I'm raising your taxes, the only tax policies I've implemented for middle-class families is a tax cut for 95 percent of working families.'' ...

"When I was campaigning,'' Obama replied, "I made a promise that I would not raise your taxes if you made $250,000 a year or less. That's what I said. But I said that for people like myself, who make more than that, there's nothing wrong with me paying a little bit more in order to help people who've got a little bit less. That was my commitment.''

Nearly 70% of American citizens, however, appear to think he's full of it:

The apparently pervasive fear of higher taxes – with 68 percent of all Americans surveyed by the Gallup Poll saying they expect higher taxes by the end of Obama's term – could help explain widespread uncertainty about the president's plans for overhauling the delivery of health care and insurance.

What's more significant is that poor Americans [including a lot of Democrats, apparently] also understand what the President apparently does not: you cannot continually toss out money without eventually paying for it--one way or the other:

Even though the Obama administration has advanced no plans to raise taxes "on any but the wealthiest Americans,'' Jones notes, the newest Gallup Poll shows that "even a majority of Americans in the lowest income group -- whose annual household incomes are less than $30,000 -- believe their taxes will go up.

"Much larger majorities of middle- and upper-income Americans expect their taxes to be raised,'' Jones adds, noting that this might in part be explained by the fact that "upper-income Americans tend to be more Republican in their party orientation.''

Among those with an annual household income of $75,000 or more, 80 percent have told Gallup's pollsters that they believe they will pay higher income taxes by the end of Obama's term.

"But even Obama's political base has doubts about his being able to hold the line on income taxes,'' Jones reports, noting that 48 percent of Democrats expect their taxes to rise during his term.

Under President Reagan, the saying among small-government believers was Starve the Beast--the idea that the very best way to reduce the size of government was simply to take away its funding.

Under President Obama we are now feeding it.