Libertarians remind Obama of his “firm pledge” not to tax health care benefits

America’s third largest party Tuesday reminded President Barack Obama that supporting a proposed $246 billion tax on employer-provided health care benefits – a proposal he opposed as “the biggest middle-class tax increase in history” in campaign ads – would break his promise to oppose any form of tax increase on families making less than $250,000 a year.

“In September of 2008, candidate Barack Obama asked Americans to read his lips and that he would oppose any tax increase whatsoever on families making less than $250,000 a year, or any proposal to tax employer-provided health care benefits” said Donny Ferguson, Libertarian National Committee Communications Director. “Now President Obama is prepared to once again break that tax promise by considering a new tax on health benefits, which he admitted last year would be ‘the largest middle-class tax increase in history.’”

Obama has already embraced tax hikes on the middle class through his $1.9 trillion “cap and trade” energy tax and new tobacco taxes and is now considering a proposed European-style “value-added” national sales tax. According to The New York Times, the Congressional Budget Office finds including health benefits in taxable income could mean $246 billion in additional revenue for a single year.

In a Sunday appearance on ABC’s This Week, hosted by former Clinton adviser George Stephanopoulos, White House adviser David Axelrod admitted Obama was considering supporting new taxes on families’ employer-provided benefits. Obama attacked the idea as “the largest middle-class tax increase in history” when it was proposed by Senator John McCain during the 2008 campaign.

“I can make a firm pledge,” then-candidate Obama told a Dover, N.H. crowd, on Sept. 12, 2008. “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.”

The Obama campaign repeated the pledge at other forums. “No one making less than $250,000 under Barack Obama's plan will see one single penny of their tax raised,” vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden said in the Oct. 2, 2008 vice-presidential debate, “whether it's their capital gains tax, their income tax, investment tax, any tax.”

“Libertarians unequivocally oppose any tax on employer-provided health benefits, and we’ll hold accountable any candidate who supports such a tax hike on families,” said Ferguson. “Once again, the Libertarian Party is the only party standing up for working families. Our health care system needs reform, but massive tax hikes and Obama’s proposed government takeover would simply take the worst aspects of the current system and magnify them.”

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76% of American Middle Class Households Not Financially Secure According to New Report

/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As the economy continues to reel, a new report finds that 4 million American households lost economic security between 2000 and 2006, and that a majority of America's middle class households are either borderline or at high risk of falling out of the middle class altogether. The new report, "From Middle to Shaky Ground: The Economic Decline of America's Middle Class, 2000-2006" was published today by the policy center Demos and the Institute for Assets and Social Policy (IASP) at Brandeis University.

"From Middle to Shaky Ground" is based on the Middle Class Security Index, co-developed by Demos and IASP/Brandeis, which uses government data and measures the financial security of the middle class by rating household stability across five core economic factors: assets, educational achievement, housing costs, budget and healthcare. Based on how a family ranked in each of these factors, they were defined as financially "secure," "borderline" or "at risk". In addition to the report, Demos and IASP/Brandeis have published an "Economic Security Scorecard" that the average family can use to measure where they fall on the Middle Class Security Index.

"The increases we're witnessing in housing costs and the number of families who lack health insurance, coupled with the extreme volatility of the average household's savings, show that a large percentage of America's middle class are not well equipped to weather this current economic storm," said Jennifer Wheary, one of the report's co-authors and a Senior Fellow at Demos.

"From Middle to Shaky Ground" shows some worrying trends in America's households, including:

--The median financial assets held by middle-class families declined by 22 percent. This means that for every dollar in median assets that middle-class families held in 2000, they held just 78 cents in 2006. These figures do not include home equity and therefore do not reflect additional losses families may have experienced due to a decline in their home values.

--Monthly housing expenses for the middle class rose by 9 percent. As a result, the percentage of middle-class families who match the Department of Housing and Urban Development's definition of "housing burdened" rose from 31 percent in 2000 to 37 percent in 2006.

--The number of middle-class families in which at least one member lacks health insurance grew from 18 percent in 2000 to 25 percent in 2006.

"Declines such as these in any one area are alarming," said Tom Shapiro, Professor of Law and Director of the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis. "Bad news across a range of areas supporting financial stability means the middle class is confronting its greatest challenge since the Great Depression."

This is the third report in a series based on the Middle Class Security Index. The first examined the overall economic security of the middle class, the second focused on African-American and Latino households. To download the report, the household financial security scorecard or the factsheet, visit www.demos.org.

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