White House Press Office: Don't Listen To the President
President Obama's press secretary considers the idea that the president is considering giving some consideration to the idea of a value added tax to be completely inconsiderable. Another White House flack considers the whole thing beyond consideration, From AP's Charles Babington:
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.
Now consider this considerably more considerate comment from the President, who told CNBC he considers the VAT a considerable idea:
When asked if he could see a potential VAT in this nation, the president said: "I know that there's been a lot of talk around town lately about the value-added tax. That is something that has worked for some countries. It's something that would be novel for the United States."
"And before, you know, I start saying 'this makes sense or that makes sense,' I want to get a better picture of what our options are," Obama said.
He said his first priority "is to figure out how can we reduce wasteful spending so that, you know, we have a baseline of the core services that we need and the government should provide. And then we decide how do we pay for that."
So which is it? Consider the options…
