"The President has not proposed this idea nor is it under consideration... The President is not proposing to cut the deficit at the expense of middle class families."Paul Volcker who sits on the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board said last September he thought a VAT or a carbon-based tax might be necessary to address mounting federal debt. But another White House official told Fox, "The Obama Administration has not done VAT calculations."
This reminds me a lot of when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the bipartisan health care summit, "No one has talked about reconciliation..."