It is quite striking how Republicans do not make much of the fact that Obama’s pledge merely to restore the Clinton tax rates has become laughable. Even if one were to forget the obvious that while the top rates were slated to go back to the near 40% level, states were simultaneously upping theirs (resulting in combined taxes of over 50% in places like California), there is the small matter of both the surcharge and the often-referenced lifting of Social Security payroll tax that currently stops at $106,000 and can, with the Medicare bite, reach over 15%.

In other words, not only are we not going back, as promised, to the Clinton era that had no surtax and no plans to lift the FICA caps, but the new rates may easily exceed 60%, when one tallies new state, federal, payroll, and surtax numbers.

And the second half of that pledge — that 95% of Americans won’t see any new taxes at all (and may receive a credit) — not only seems already broken with plans to raise energy, alcohol, and tobacco taxes, but will be soon the stuff of ridicule once we learn that the deficit, despite all these new taxes, still grows or stays well over $1 trillion per annum in the years to come. That by needs will prompt discussion of a national value added tax or hikes in the rates for almost everyone (and perhaps reconsideration of the Bush-era tax policies that led to nearly 40% being exempt entirely from taxes).

Obama’s campaign promises hinged on new Clinton-era taxes on the “rich” to pay for new programs, while everyone else was exempt or given a “credit.” The reality is that we get mega deficits and soon likely taxes on almost everyone.

This is new ground: We have never had such massive taxation simultaneously with such massive and growing deficits. Does anyone in this out-of-control administration, as it approaches the cliff, realize that it is about to violate its key campaign promises while getting almost nothing in return for its perfidy — except more debt for the next generation?