Monday, February 07, 2011

A Lie and the Lying Liar Who Told It: "I Didn't Raise Taxes Once"

Before yesterday's Obama-O'Reilly interview inevitably descended into Jeff Zeleny territory about 9 minutes in, the President slipped one of his patented bald-faced lies right past the Fox News host.

But the Wall Street Journal editorial board didn't miss it.
Bill O'Reilly's Fox interview with President Obama on Sunday was fascinating, and not merely because Mr. Obama made clear he's an ardent fan of these pages. What really caught our attention was the President's claim that "I didn't raise taxes once. I lowered taxes over the last two years."

The Presidency is demanding, and with the Egypt mess and his other duties, perhaps Mr. Obama has forgotten some of his tax achievements. Allow us to refresh his memory. In his historic health-care bill, for example, there is the new $27 billion "fee" on drug companies that is already in effect. Next year, device manufacturers will get hit to the tune of $20 billion, and heath insurers will pay $60 billion starting in 2014—all of which are de facto tax increases because these collections will be passed on to consumers as higher costs. Of course, these are merely tax increases on business.
Read the whole thing.

Obama also found a way to work in the "If you have health care that you like, you keep it" howler that he still likes to riff on from time to time.

O'Reilly's scathing rebuttal? "I know all that. I listen to it every day."

Remind me again - what was the point of this interview?

Cross-posted.

3 comments:

James Wallace said...

He raised taxes on 20 % of the American population within 3 weeks of taking office ...cigarette's and 20 % of Americans still smoke ....mostly poor

uncledan said...

I will be very surprised if this doesn't damage BOR's ratings. He completely folded. No hard questions. No Egypt. No borders. No START treaty. No passing bills at midnight. No demands for massive tax cuts, spending cuts, accountability of the czars. Nothing but softballs.

nicholas shaw said...

Really, did anyone expect him to sit in front of BOR and tell the truth? As James noted below, the very first thing he did in office was raise the tax on smokes. Yes, that's 20% of the population at least and usually at the low end of the pay scale. Again, who really expected him to be truthful considering his record?