Orszag: President Never 'Pledged' No New Taxes, He Simply 'Preferred'

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, grilled about Obama’s pledge not to raise middle-class taxes, left the president wiggle room. Lloyd Grove reports.

Remember President Obama’s supposedly inviolable pledge—repeatedly uttered during the 2008 campaign and at countless town meetings since the inauguration—that he would never raise taxes on middle-class citizens who earn $250,000 a year or less?

This morning at a Manhattan breakfast sponsored by Thomson Reuters, White House Budget Director Peter Orszag threw that pledge out the window. Instead, he described Obama’s “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge as a “stance” and a “preference” that is subject to study by the president’s newly-formed bipartisan Commission on Fiscal Responsibility.