Obama has a history of breaking promises

In his State of the Union address tonight, President Barack Obama exclaimed that “our government shouldn’t make promises we cannot keep – but we must keep the promises we’ve already made.”

The problem with that statement, however, is that he’s already broken so many promises that it’s hard to remember which ones he actually carried through with!

One of the biggest ways in which the president has failed the American people is his track record of raising taxes on the middle class. Despite repeated vows not to increase taxes on the middle class, he forced the “largest tax on the American people in history” in the form of Obamacare. President Obama also vowed to lower health insurance premiums by $2500 annually for the average American; instead, health insurance premiums have increased by more than $3,000 over the past four years.

The president also claimed to put the government on a path to cut the federal deficit by $4 trillion over ten years, yet, he has failed to follow through with this. As a result, $1.2 trillion will be sequestered from our defense budget over the next 10 years if a solution isn’t reached by March 1.

President Obama also failed to follow through on two other key areas – creating additional infrastructure in the United States and reforming our antiquated tax code. The president scrapped the biggest “shovel ready” project in recent history – the Keystone XL pipeline – which would have created billions of dollars in revenue in a region of the country that desperately needs it, resulting in improved infrastructures in those areas.

And while both Republicans and Democrats agree that the government needs to simplify the current tax code, there has been little progress to that effect. Tax code reform, which was originally supposed to be part of the deal to avert falling off the fiscal cliff on January 1, was scrapped, and there is little indication that it will be pursued in the near future.

President Obama even failed to keep his promise on closing the detention facilities at Guanatanamo Bay, despite signing an executive order in 2009 to do so.

If President Obama can’t even keep his promises when it comes to these important issues, how can he go about making new promises like nationalized preschool or a steep raise in the minimum wage?