“Read my lips. No more taxes.” When former President George H.W. Bush reneged on his 1988 no-tax pledge two years later, it cost him a second term. Now, President Obama seems headed down the same dead end. During the 2008 campaign, he categorically promised not to raise taxes “one single dime” on the 95 percent of Americans making less than $250,000 per year. But, as his two top economic advisors acknowledged Sunday, there are too few rich people to pay for Obama’s trillion-dollar government-run health care plan, his already failed $787 billion economic stimulus program, and his quadrupling of the federal deficit. This makes the middle class the obvious next target for “sacrifice.”

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the White House was not yet ready to rule out a middle-class tax hike. It’s a matter of when, not if, he added. Then Obama’s National Economic Council director Lawrence Summers likewise said when asked about the middle-class tax hike on “Meet the Press” that it was “never a good idea to absolutely rule things out, no matter what.”