He already has in a round-about manner, placing higher tax on sales of cigarettes which, as the Associated Press pointed out, is disproportionately purchased by the middle and lower classes. But this could be a more direct tax increase.

Hey, remember when Obama insisted during the campaign that no one making less than $250,000 per year would see a tax increase? And his campaign blasted any critic who suggested otherwise? Yeah, about that…

Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama said he is “agnostic” about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit.

He’s “agnostic”? In other words, he’s neither for nor against raising taxes on the middle class? He explicitly promised no tax increases on the middle class. Now he couldn’t care either way?

Obama, in a Feb. 9 Oval Office interview, said that a presidential commission on the budget needs to consider all options for reducing the deficit, including tax increases and cuts in spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

“The whole point of it is to make sure that all ideas are on the table,” the president said in the interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “So what I want to do is to be completely agnostic, in terms of solutions.”

Neither the deficit nor the poor state of the economy was a surprise. He knew he would deal with both, though on a significantly smaller scale, back during the campaign. It’s his fault that the deficit is as high as it is. Perhaps he shouldn’t have promised no new taxes on the middle class if he knew he was going to spike the deficit.

If Obama abandons his promise, he can kiss his political career and any re-election good-bye. The commercials displaying his broken promises on middle class taxes will be as potent in 2012 as they were in 1992. Republicans will need to run on little else to retire his sorry butt.