OH WAIT, ANOTHER LATEST POLICY – AT 10:30 P.M. ET:  Are we not blessed?  We get two "latest policy" pronouncements in one day.  (See the post just below.)  I'm just bowled over by the intellectual alertness in Washington.  Maybe they are demigods.

Oh, yes, the latest.  Well (organ music, please) in the last week or so we've gotten a lot of hints that the administration may ask for a VAT (value added tax) to raise money to cover the cost of the country it's buying.  Ours. 

No, said the White House news secretary, Robert Gibbs.  Perish the thought.

No, said the president.  Perish the thought again to be sure it's perished.

No said the administration in unison.  Perish, perish, and perish.

Uh, until today.  Apparently, perish doesn't mean the same thing in Noah Obama's International Dictionary as it does in my little Webster's.  We must accept refinement of ideas:

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama suggested Wednesday that a new value-added tax on Americans is still on the table, seeming to show more openness to the idea than his aides have expressed in recent days.

Before deciding what revenue options are best for dealing with the deficit and the economy, Obama said in an interview with CNBC, "I want to get a better picture of what our options are."

After Obama adviser Paul Volcker recently raised the prospect of a value-added tax, or VAT, the Senate voted 85-13 last week for a nonbinding "sense of the Senate" resolution that calls the such a tax "a massive tax increase that will cripple families on fixed income and only further push back America's economic recovery."

For days, White House spokesmen have said the president has not proposed and is not considering a VAT.

"I think I directly answered this the other day by saying that it wasn't something that the president had under consideration," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters shortly before Obama spoke with CNBC.

After the interview, White House deputy communications director Jen Psaki said nothing has changed and the White House is "not considering" a VAT. 

COMMENT:  More integrity and transparency.  They're makin' it up as they go along.  As I understand it, one presidential statement will appear on The New York Times fiction bestseller list Sunday.  I'm checking my local bookstore.

April 21, 2010