"The spending cuts are in the out-years. The tax increases are going to come soon. This is the old cliché, this is Lucy and Charlie Brown and the football. And the American people say, 'We're not falling for that game anymore. We're not going to let you promise spending cuts later to raise taxes now.' If these tax things are so bad that Chris [Van Hollen] talks about, well the Democrats just controlled all of government eight months ago. Why in the world didn't they get rid of them?"
Interesting how the establishment MSM has its talking points down to the letter from the White House, no?
UPDATE: The real reason behind the drive for more taxes via discriminations: A Great Geitner Gaffe
In other words, all money is the government's, and anything you get to keep is a cost to it.Michael Kinsley once famously described a gaffe as a politician inadvertently saying what he actually meant — usually something that he believes, says in private, but is careful not to say in public. On Wednesday Geitner wasn’t careful.
In an almost too-perfect expression of the Obama administration’s economic policy,Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the House Small Business Committee on Wednesday that the Obama administration believes taxes on small business must increase so the administration does not have to “shrink the overall size of government programs.”
The administration’s plan to raise the tax rate on small businesses is part of its plan to raise taxes on all Americans who make more than $250,000 per year—including businesses that file taxes the same way individuals and families do….
Geithner, continuing, argued that if the administration did not extract a trillion dollars in new revenue from its plan to increase taxes on people earning more than $250,000, including small businesses, the government would in effect “finance” what he called a “tax benefit” for those people.
UPDATE #2: Obama’s Entitlement Cuts“We’re not doing it because we want to do it, we’re doing it because if we don’t do it, then, again, I have to go out and borrow a trillion dollars over the next 10 years to finance those tax benefits….No, this is not a parody from The Onion or wishful thinking from Salon or the Huffington Post. It’s your government saying what it really thinks.
Not only that, he argued, but cutting spending by as much as the “modest change in revenue” (i.e. $1 trillion) the administration expects from raising taxes on small business would likely have more of a “negative economic impact” than the tax increases themselves would.
“And if we were to cut spending by that magnitude to do it, you’d be putting a huge additional burden on the economy, probably greater negative economic impact than that modest change in revenue,” said Geithner.
Like his job qualifications and the credibility of the liberal media that installed him in power and props up his public image, the cuts to bloated entitlement programs that Comrade Obama would be willing to make are nonexistent — as Charles Krauthammer confirms:UPDATE #3: Via memeorandum: Obama generated twice as many campaign contributors as new jobs through second quarter of 2011. Can you imagine the headlines if this were Bush? And from Instapundit:
The House GOP should just let Obaa know what happened last November: "We won!"WELL, THAT’S BIG OF HIM: So Long as He Gets What He Wants, Obama Is Flexible in the Budget Negotiations.