That's not what we thought he said

During his address to the joint session of Congress, President Obama claimed, in clear and concise language that if you make under $250,000/year, he would not raise your taxes.

...let me perfectly clear, because I know you’ll hear the same old claims that rolling back these tax breaks means a massive tax increase on the American people:  if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime.  I repeat: not one single dime.

Yet, the President's budget includes an energy "cap and trade" plan which would work like this:

Each large-scale emitter, or company, will have a limit on the amount of greenhouse gas that it can emit. The firm must have an “emissions permit” for every ton of carbon dioxide it releases into the atmosphere. These permits set an enforceable limit, or cap, on the amount of greenhouse gas pollution that the company is allowed to emit. Over time, the limits become stricter, allowing less and less pollution, until the ultimate reduction goal is met....

...more efficient companies, who emit less than their allowance, can sell their extra permits to companies that are not able to make reductions as easily. This creates a system that guarantees a set level of overall reductions, while rewarding the most efficient companies and ensuring that the cap can be met at the lowest possible cost to the economy.

The emissions permit would cost money, of course. Money that would be passed on to consumers in the form of higher electricity costs.

Now because the rate increase will be so egregious, the President will use some of the revenues to give tax breaks to people. But those tax breaks begin to disappear on people making over $75,000/year and disappear completely for some making over $100,000/year.

That tax relief, the administration will argue, will offset households’ higher costs for utilities and other products and services from businesses’ passing on their permit expenses.

That tax credit annually will provide $400 to low-wage and middle-income workers or $800 to couples; Mr. Obama would like to increase those figures to $500 and $1,000. The credit phases out for those with incomes above $75,000 a year and for couples with incomes of more than $150,000; no benefit would go to individuals with more than $100,000 income and couples with $200,000.

What starts as a tax on business becomes a tax on people as businesses push the cost down to captive consumers.

I was pretty sure the President was clear about the no taxes below the $250,000/yr mark but I must have heard wrong.

And it's not just us right of center folks who think that the President not the person they thought he was. Take David Brooks for example

We sympathize with a lot of the things that President Obama is trying to do. We like his investments in education and energy innovation. We support health care reform that expands coverage while reducing costs....

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative, in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice. As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal.”

Is it too early to say I told you so?