Obama Uncensored: Rightwing Centrist Tax Cut Plan?

"In an astounding interview with the Des Moines Register this week, President Obama suggested that if re-elected, he will move sharply to the center in order to build the bipartisan consensus that he failed to achieve during almost four years in the White House.

Team Obama at first insisted that the interview remain off-the-record. But after a Register editor asked in a blog post why the president's pitch for a Register endorsement should not be public, the White House agreed to put it on the record. Whether on the record or off, reporters and voters will have to decide how credible the president's message is.

Discussing a potential second term agenda, Mr. Obama said, "We can start looking at a serious corporate tax reform agenda that's revenue-neutral but lowers rates and broadens the base—something that both Republicans and Democrats have expressed an interest in."

He sure is right when he says Republicans have expressed interest—in fact they have been pleading with him to support such a reform for years. If he had been willing to back a flatter, simpler corporate tax system without demanding additional government revenue, Republicans would have cleared the House calendar to pass it. But Mr. Obama is suggesting that the demands of politics have prevented him from appearing moderate and bipartisan?

Mr. Obama also posed as a closet centrist on the issue of regulation, telling the Register, "I've expressed a deep desire and taken executive action to weed out regulations that aren't contributing to the health and public safety of our people. And we've made a commitment to look back and see if there are regulations out there that aren't working, then let's get rid of them and see if we can clear out some of the underbrush on that. Again, that's something that should be non-ideological." It sure should be, and would be if Mr. Obama agreed with Republicans that agencies like his Environmental Protection Agency are imposing costly burdens with little benefit to public health."

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