WSJ: "Take everything they earn, and it still won't be enough"

In my previous post focused on President Barack Obama, I called him a Wilsonian demagogue based on his ~SOTU SOTU speech.

The clues were there from the start. The Rorschach campaign promises. The post-partisan rhetoric.

With his presidency barely a month old, the clues have been supplanted with a Niagara Falls of proof. Hot Air today highlighted a prime example for The Wall Street Journal, under the title "The 2% Illusion":

President Obama has laid out the most ambitious and expensive domestic agenda since LBJ, and now all he has to do is figure out how to pay for it. On Tuesday, he left the impression that we need merely end "tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans," and he promised that households earning less than $250,000 won't see their taxes increased by "one single dime."

This is going to be some trick. Even the most basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can't possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama's new spending ambitions.

If the WSJ analysis is correct, then Obama is either guaranteeing us a deficit that will spiral upward perhaps out of sight, or a great big payback to the middle class in the form of tax hikes.

I can't help but rewrite the old "Scorpion and the Frog" fable in my mind starring Barack Obama as the scorpion the American taxpayer as the frog.

Put me on your back and we will cross this time of economic crisis.

But aren't you a tax and spend liberal? You'll sting me with higher taxes, right?

No, no, no, no. Only the top 2 percent, which is almost nothing and anyway they can afford it. In fact, I'll lower your taxes.

Count me in! Climb aboard, friend!

[...]

Ow! You raised my taxes!

You knew I was a tax and spend liberal. I cannot help myself. It is my nature.

We heard assurances from various talking heads that Obama was much more partial to the free market than we might have thought. Obama went out of his way to reinforce that impression with his rhetoric. The stimulus and the proposed budget make it look like we've got a scorpion on our back.