Now THERE'S chutzpah: Obama claims he hasn't raised taxes?

By Warner Todd Huston

John Kartch over at Americans for Tax Reform found President Obama's claim that he hasn't raised taxes a bit, shall we say, quixotic. At one point in the interview with Obama conducted by Fox News' Bill O'Reilly and shown on Sunday, Obama stated bald faced that he didn't do so. The truth seems to be a different animal, however.

Employing his best preacher's alliterative mode by repeating it twice, Obama told O'Reilly, "I didn't raise taxes once. I lowered taxes over the last two years. I lowered taxes for the last two years."

But did he hold the line on taxes? Kartch shows that Obama's claim does not hold water. In fact, "just sixteen days into his presidency," Kartch reminds us, Obama raised taxes on tobacco by 156 percent! Then came Obamacare, little else but a defacto tax hike in at least a dozen areas.

And then there is the smoke and mirrors:

President Obama's entire claim of being a net tax-cutter rests merely upon the temporary tax relief he has signed into law. The tax increases Obama has signed into law have invariably been permanent. In fact, Obama signed into law $7 in permanent tax hikes for every $1 in permanent tax cuts

He has more, but Kartch does a great job destroying Obama's campaign rhetoric — and this is obviously campaign rhetoric. This unsupportable claim is typical of the flat out untruths that Obama lathered onto the voters during the 2008 campaign. Obama has made an art out of saying one thing and doing another as his recent claim to want to cut regulations for the business sector showed. In that case he made a grand show of pretending to want to be the "business president" and said he was keen to cut regulations. Yet even as he was employing that campaign rhetoric his entire administration was geared to saddle business with more regulations than ever without the slightest step toward fulfilling the campaign promise.

Obama is an expert at saying one thing and doing another. In fact, that has been his modus for his entire political career. I am from Chicago and even when he was in state government he had a reputation for "listening" to the opposition, cordially meeting with them... and never, ever voting with them. Never. Not once. He made a reputation sounding like the "reasonable" one claiming that we need to "work together." But even as president he doesn't make good on the claim.

After all these years, the closest Obama's come to siding with his opposition was the recent extension of the Bush tax rates. But this is even more smoke and mirrors than a vote against his left-wing agenda because he fully intends to dump the Bush rates in a few short years and that would result in a turn right back to his leftist, anti-business agenda.

Obama produces soothing sounds, looks earnestly at the camera, smiles warmly as he reads the teleprompter and claims that we need bipartisan efforts. Then he quietly pushes hard left-wing policies, puts extremists in places of power to assure that agenda, and votes accordingly regardless of the happy talk rhetoric.

© Warner Todd Huston