Talk about an inconvenient truth.
Vice President Joe Biden — he of the notoriously runaway motor-mouth — let slip an unexpected pearl of wisdom Tuesday while campaigning in Charlotte, NC.
“How can they justify raising taxes on the middle class that has been buried the last four years?” shrieked the Veep. “How in Lord’s name can they justify raising their taxes with these tax cuts?”
Never mind Biden’s nonsensical “raising their taxes with these tax cuts” line.
Because his real eye-opener was about how the middle class “has been buried in the last four years” — i.e., precisely the years that he and President Obama have been running the country.
At best, that’s a gaffe — which columnist Michael Kinsley once defined as “when a politician tells some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.”
The obvious truth here being what his GOP opponent, Rep. Paul Ryan, was quick to point out: “Of course the middle class has been buried. They’ve being buried by regulations; they’re being buried by taxes; they’re being buried by borrowing.”
In short, “they’re being buried by the Obama administration’s economic failures.”
Biden tried to make amends, telling folks at a later event “the middle class was buried by the policies of Romney and Ryan.”
But, again, Romney and Ryan weren’t the ones in charge for “the last four years.”
Biden and Obama claim Mitt Romney’s plan would actually raise taxes on the middle class by an average $2,000.
But that claim, based on the left-wing Tax Policy Center’s study, has been widely debunked — and the group itself has all but disavowed its dubious analysis. (Of course, it doesn’t help that Romney’s done a poor job of making the case for his own plan.)
Maybe Biden was thinking of the burden of ObamaCare, with its 18 separate tax hikes totaling $836 billion over the next decade — most of which will land squarely on the middle class.
Joe Biden may think he misspoke, but those were the most truthful words he’s likely to utter during the entire campaign.