Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Fact-Checking President Obama's Claim: 'I Didn't Raise Taxes Once'
O'REILLY: Do you deny that you are a man who wants to redistribute wealth.
OBAMA: Absolutely.
O'REILLY: You deny that?
OBAMA: Absolutely. I didn't raise taxes once. I lowered taxes over the last two years.I lowered taxes for the last two years.”
- Americans for Tax Reform, Obama Makes Super False Tax Claim: “I didn’t raise taxes once”; In Pre-Super Bowl Interview, President Obama Fumbles His Record on Taxes
- PolitiFact.com, President Barack Obama Says He Didn't Raise Taxes Once
- Wall Street Journal editorial, 'I Didn't Raise Taxes Once': Refreshing the President's Memory
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2011/02/fact-checking.html
Comments
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Is the entire world full of mental defectives who will swallow this nonsense from Obama?
Posted by: Chester White | Feb 9, 2011 7:33:16 AM
I think by now most people (certainly those institutions who "corrected" the President now that raising taxes includes miscellaneous taxes (not just income taxes) but also enacting law that increases the NPV of future taxes (which is substantial and where most of Obamacare taxes fall). But O'Reilly's question was broader -- "redistribute wealth". In this category there are myriad more examples of Obama's penchant for using the government to do just that, some through the current tax code, in the form of tax expenditures that targeted only lower income groups (my Tax Cut software reminds me constantly of how many credits I was NOT entitled to, many were enacted with Obama's signature); some examples are from the likely redistributive effect of current spending targeting low income groups that will only be paid through future and unspecified tax increases; and some other examples where the redistribution will be through regulation and through other forms of picking winners and losers through government policy.
Posted by: MG | Feb 9, 2011 6:23:07 AM
I wonder why no one is calling Obama on the imposition of the first federal sales tax - on tanning salons? That is a small but radical step and people seem to have forgotten it.
Posted by: Oh, really? | Feb 9, 2011 3:17:45 AM
He thinks we're all a bunch of dumb jerks. If he doesn't become a one-term president, then we are.
Posted by: Pat | Feb 9, 2011 1:10:31 AM
I mean seriously...has this President, since he started his campaign a few years ago (well, the seed was actually planted at the '04 Democratic National Convention when he was strategically chosen as the key-note speaker of the evening LOL That was no accident) actually said one thing that was true, or accurate? Other than admitting an agenda to "fundamentally transform America!" Which he really is trying to do, unfortunately!
Posted by: celebs4truth | Feb 8, 2011 8:54:20 PM
he doesn't believe in redistributing wealth?? the shame here is that there's likely millions ofuninformed people out there that really swallow this baloney
thank goodness for the internet:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/politics/item_iQRtIQHjYPcEoMZ0lJX0hI
"My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."
Posted by: pithyone | Feb 8, 2011 8:27:42 PM
"I didn't raise taxes once."
And there was this other time when I didn't steal from the cookie jar. Once.
Posted by: McGehee | Feb 8, 2011 1:30:00 PM
Speaking forensically, since when is taxation synonymous with wealth redistribution? If he borrows a few trillion from the Chinese and uses it to increase foodstamps, he has redistributed wealth from future taxpayers to current welfare queens.
Posted by: John | Feb 8, 2011 1:05:18 PM
The PolitiFact piece ends by saying that the extension of current tax rates (postponing the sunset of EGTRRA, JGTRRA & TIPRA, collectiovely known as teh "Bush tax cuts", for two years)is a tax cut for which Obama should get credit.
It is nothing of the sort.
Posted by: Dougger | Feb 8, 2011 12:19:46 PM
David Walker, former comptroller general of the U.S. and former head of the Government Accountability Office:
There are two kinds of taxes: current taxes and deferred taxes. Deficits, especially unreasonable deficits, represent deferred taxes on our children and grandchildren with interest. That's reality, and it's also math.
Maybe Obama didn't know that he was running a deficit.
Posted by: Woody | Feb 8, 2011 11:37:13 AM
I'm sure it will be on the front page of the WaPo and NYT ... any day now ...
Posted by: Jeff | Feb 8, 2011 11:37:06 AM
End of March, 2009 federal cigarette taxes went up from 39 cents to $1.01. I no longer contribute to that voluntary tax program, thankfully.
Posted by: MOMiles | Feb 8, 2011 11:25:38 AM
Didn't tanning salons get a race-based tax hike of 10%. For starters.
Posted by: Thom Yorkie | Feb 8, 2011 11:07:16 AM
Strictly speaking, it's true that he didn't raise taxes. He lies, however, when he claims to have lowered taxes. Mr Obama, the ostensible constitutional law professor, needs to review Article One, where he will find that the congress, not the president, has the power to levy taxes.
-jcr
Posted by: John C. Randolph | Feb 8, 2011 10:48:35 AM
He didn't lie. You see, he claimed he "didn't raise taxes once". That's correct. He raised them multiple times.
Posted by: Eric B | Feb 8, 2011 10:39:13 AM
Isn't raising taxes more than once the same as not raising taxes once? Of course the sentence would be more accurate if he has said "I didn't raise taxes just once. But then there still the following sentence.
Typical Obama. Doesn't know how to quit when he is ahead on points.
Posted by: Mark L | Feb 8, 2011 10:26:01 AM
Is it possible that he really believes what he said, and isn't just using a lawyerly parsing to deliberately mislead and deceive? Can he be that stupid and out of touch with what his administration has been up to?
Posted by: ruralcounsel | Feb 10, 2011 9:25:06 AM