Ever since Walter Mondale forthrightly promised a tax increase at the 1984 Democratic Convention and was rewarded with a historic landslide for Reagan that fall, Democrats have been loathe to speak of raising taxes.

Oh, they still love to DO it, they just hate to talk about it. And when they can't avoid talking about it, they try to cloak it in language which doesn't betray the reality, such as "allowing tax cuts to expire." The only type of tax hike they will ever speak of openly is that directed against the "rich," which status they variously define, if at all.

Senator Barack Obama is no exception. He's already endorsed "letting the Bush tax cuts expire," and now suggests a huge tax increase on upper wage earners to address the Social Security funding problem. Teddy Davis reports for ABC News:

"If we kept the payroll tax rate exactly the same but applied it to all earnings and not just the first $97,000," Obama wrote this week in an Iowa newspaper, "we could eliminate the entire Social Security shortfall."

Obama's idea, which he described on the op-ed page of Friday's Quad City Times as being "one possible option" and not a formal plan, would raise more than $1 trillion over 10 years by subjecting income of more than $97,000 to a 12.4 percent tax. Half of the tax would be paid by employees and half would be paid by employers.

Read the entire article at the above link. Give him credit for being honest enough to admit it. (John Edwards also proposed something similar but, in keeping with his new populist image, would only tax those with incomes over $200,000, the better to "soak the rich." Earners between $97K and $200K would pay no additional tax).

This concept would forever break the "social compact" aspect of Social Security, the idea that you pay in but will get something in return later. This has never been more than myth anyway, of course, but it's been a fiction the politicians have been afraid to rend, until now.

As tax hikes go, it would be huge, especially in conjunction with the tax increase Obama and the other Democrats have pre-programmed by "allowing the cuts to expire." At least we know where Obama is coming from, as if there was ever any doubt.

In other news, Obama also reaffirmed his much-criticized willingness to meet with Iranian "President" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad if he is elected, according to Beth Fouhy of the Associated Press (read her report at the link).