Hey, remember when Barack Obama promised not to raise taxes on those making less than $250,000 per year? Of course you do. He told anyone who stood still for more than 15 seconds that he wouldn’t raise taxes on the middle class.

FactCheck.org even used the pledge to (stupidly) debunk a Republican ad from 2008:

The TV ad claims in a graphic that Obama would “raise taxes on middle class.” In fact, Obama’s plan promises cuts for middle-income taxpayers and would increase rates only for persons with family incomes above $250,000 or with individual incomes above $200,000.

Turns out the Republican advertisement was right and Obama was lying. But I digress. Here’s Obama’s pledge from July 2008:

“Let me be clear — if you are a family making less than $250,000 a year … you will not see your taxes go up,” he said in July 2008 at a Springfield, Mo., town hall meeting — it was a statement he repeated across the country.

Here’s his campaign website:

Middle class families will see their taxes cut – and no family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase.

A campaign stop pledge from September 2008:

“I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increases,” the Illinois senator told a crowd in Dover, N.H. on Sept. 12, 2008. “Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

So we’ve established that Obama promised repeatedly not to raise taxes on those making less than $250,000 per year. In fact, in the last quote we’re told it’s “firm pledge”. Firm. Pledge.

And now that Barack Obama is in power and taking heat for the deficit? Rather than cut spending and reform entitlements, his tax pledge has become nothing more than a “preference”.

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.

“The president has been very clear about what he prefers,” Orszag said under questioning from Thomson Reuters’ Chrystia Freeland. “That was his stance during the campaign, and he still believes that’s the right course forward. But he has also been very clear that we shall let the commission go do its work.”

No, Peter, he made clear he was making a “firm pledge” not to raise taxes on families making less than $250,000. In no one’s universe are the terms “firm pledge” and “preference” interchangeable.

Later on during the breakfast, Orszag resisted my attempts to pin him down when I asked if the White House could live with a tax increase on the middle class.

“No, I didn’t say that,” he answered. “What I did say is look, the typical thing that’s going to happen, and it’s already been happening, is everyone is going to come along with this idea—the value added tax, this thing under $250,000, Social Security, Medicare changes, what have you—and you’re looking for us to say no, yes, no, yes, no, yes—which will mean that the commission has absolutely nothing to talk about and nothing to do. The president has been very clear that we’re not going to play that game.”

Again, Obama promised no tax increase on families making less than $250,000 per year. Now it’s just a “preference” he can abandon if some unelected deficit commission decides taxes need to be increased? Obama lied. The only “game” being played here is the Obama Administration’s attempt to spin a “firm pledge” into a “preference” two years later.