I count myself as one of many Americans who knew better than to trust congressional Democrats. When they were working to elect Barack Obama president, they kept quiet as he proclaimed that he was not a tax and spend liberal. He promised that we in the middle class needn’t worry about taxes increasing. If you make less than $250,000 a year you “will not see your taxes go up one dime.” Many of us were skeptical then, and it seems we may have been right.

It appears that the liberals in Congress are about to ask the president to break that promise. They are looking at a plan that will increase taxes on the middle class, starting with incomes as low as $30,000 a year. The reason? It seems that Congress has come to the conclusion that the country is broke when it comes to fighting the war in Afghanistan. There is plenty of money for their social programs, but not the war effort. You see, they hate the war, and by taxing us to fight it, they want to make us hate it too. And it also frees up money they need to push new social legislation. From bailouts, green energy, junk cars, welfare programs, illegal aliens and more bailouts, the Dems need some new cash. They call their war tax temporary. But we all know what that means. Long after we are out of Afghanistan, this tax will continue. After all, we just recently got rid of the telephone tax that was imposed over 100 years ago to fight the Spanish-American War.

So now Obama faces a critical decision. If he goes along with the congressional  liberalswho support this tax increase, ge breaks his most important promise to the middle class. Most of the Democratic leadership in the House favors the tax. From Speaker Pelosi, to her committee chairmen Charlie Rangel, John Murtha and John Larson. they are calling it the “Share The Sacrifice Act.” It raises taxes on millions of Americans, including a 1% surtax on households earning between $30,000 and $250,000 a year. There was no effort to “share the sacrifice” for health insurance because they don’t want that issue tied to a tax increase.

The Government Accounting Office has recently released a report that shows how much federal spending is truly wasted. It is far and away more money than the Democrats will raise with their new taxes. Remember, we are spendiong $43 billion on the war in Afghanistan. Here are some examples of where they could get the money to pay for the war:

• Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other entitlement programs made improper payments to people and doctors totalling $73 billion.
• The federal government pays $25 billion a year maintaining buildings around the country that unused or vacant.
• The GAO determined that 22% of all government social programs have no impact whatsoever on the populations they serve, costing $123 billion.

The problem is program duplication. Congress continues to churn out more social programs every year without determining if there is already a program that does the same work. In an effort to please all their special interest groups, they end up piling program on top of program, all doing similar work. Examples:

• The Government Accounting Office reports that there are 342 economic development programs, 130 programs serving the disabled, 130 programs serving “at risk” youth, 90 early childhood develpment programs, 75 programs funding international education and culturaql programs, and 72 safe water programs.
• Nearly half of all credit card purchases on federal government credit cars are improper. We taxpayers funded federal employees mortgages, gambling trips, XBoxes, IPods, jewelry, internet dating services, just to name a few.
• Many federal employees refuse to fly coach, costing $146 million.
• Bloomberg reported in an article dated August 16, 2009, that the Pentagon spent over $998 thousand to ship two 19 cent washers to Florida.
• After Hurricane Katrina, victims of the disaster were sent debit cards to purchase food and basic necessities. When the reciepts started coming in, they were for Carribean vacations, NFL tickets, “GIrls Gone Wild” videos, a sex change operation, and lots and lots of jewelry.

The list above is not nearly complete, but shows a few examples of fraud and waste in government. Congress has not considered closing these loopholes before going to the taxpayer to pay for the war. They ignore the cost overuns that cost the budget over $1 trillion a year, duplication of programs, and many other GAO reported fraud and waste examples. Many of these costly and wasteful programs have the names of members of Congress attached to them, so they aren’t going anywhere soon.

If Congress pushes Obama to break the promise he made to the middle class, I will gladly join an impeachment movement that is already gaining support due to  other problems with this administration. He would be wise to resist the liberals and turn back this ill advised piece of legislation.