Did Biden tip a looming middle-class tax hike ???

Sheriff Joe admitted to George Stephanopoulos that the administration badly "misread the economy".

The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy," Biden told me during our exclusive "This Week" interview in Iraq.

Biden acknowledged administration officials were too optimistic earlier this year when they predicted the unemployment rate would peak at 8 percent as part of their effort to sell the stimulus package. The national unemployment rate has ballooned to 9.5 percent in June -- the worst in 26 years.

"The truth is, there was a misreading of just how bad an economy we inherited," said Biden, who is leading the administration's effort to implement it's $787 billion economic stimulus plan.

"Now, that doesn't -- I'm not -- it's now our responsibility. So the second question becomes, did the economic package we put in place, including the Recovery Act, is it the right package given the circumstances we're in? And we believe it is the right package given the circumstances we're in," he told me.

The vice president argued more time is needed for the stimulus to work.

"We misread how bad the economy was, but we are now only about 120 days into the recovery package," he said. "The truth of the matter was, no one anticipated, no one expected that that recovery package would in fact be in a position at this point of having to distribute the bulk of money."

The conventional wisdom is that this was the beginning of a push for porkulus v2.0. And Jim Geraghty has a great post on how this admission doesn't square with the President's rhetoric as well as a video clip of Biden himself bashing McCain during the campaign for being "profoundly out of touch" with economic reality".

But this also lays the groundwork for the slow walk back from Obama's promise not to increase taxes on those making under $250,000 a year. Just like Bill Clinton, who ran on a middle-class tax cut (sound familiar ??) who weeks into office sought the largest tax increase in US history on the basis that the deficit, that he inherited, was worse than anticipated --- even though he cited an even higher anticipated deficit than the actual deficit in an interview during the campaign! (Again, sound familiar??)

We can just envision the re-play. "I didn't want to raise taxes. But the evil Boooosh has forced me to because of the rotten economy I inherited -- which also made me quadruple the deficit."

Also --after spending 30 years in the Senate Biden should not get a pass when he whines about "the economy we inherited".