President Obama promises ‘massive job killing taxes’ if re-elected

What he said today:



Video: President Obama promises ‘massive job killing taxes’ if re-elected.

“So, when you hear folks saying ‘Well, the president shouldn’t want massive job killing tax increases when the economy is this weak.’ Nobody’s looking to raise taxes right now. We’re talking about potentially 2013 and the out years.” (emphasis added)

Re-elect me to get massive job killing tax hikes when I’m a lame duck and you can’t do a thing about it. That right there is a sure-fire winner of a message. If you want to morph into Walter Mondale circa 1984.

In 1984, running against incumbent President Ronald Reagan, newly-nominated Democrat presidential candidate Walter Mondale stood before the Democrat convention. There, on nomination night, he lost the election:



Wikipedia explains the "Mondale Moment."

"... Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did." While this was meant to show that Mondale would be honest with voters, it was largely interpreted as a campaign pledge to raise taxes, which was unappealing to many voters.

Don't you love that last - "a campaign pledge to raise taxes ... was unappealing to many voters." Yeah, like those of the 49 states that Mondale lost!

That aside, it seems somewhat other worldly now to hear a Democrat presidential nominee say of increasing federal deficits, "We are living on borrowed money and borrowed time. These deficits hike interest rates, clobber exports, stunt investment, kill jobs, undermine growth, cheat our kids and shrink our future." Won't be hearing anything like that from the Dems nowadays, nossir.

But the fact is that deficits, hence the federal debt, did balloon under Reagan and no amount of right wing hagiography of Reagan can hide that fact. Except for World War II, the United States ran negligible to no federal deficits for all the 20th century until 1970, when Republican Richard Nixon was president and both houses were controlled by Democrats.

For some reason, a Republican president and a Democrat-controlled Congress has proven lethal to fiscal sanity in this country. Beginning in 1986, the deficit really rocketed upward but after 1995, with Democrat Bill Clinton in the White House and Republicans controlling Congress, deficits fell sharply until 2000.

Then George W. Bush happened. My longtime readers know I am no fan of GWB, even denouncing his 2004 reelection bid the year before. But the fact is - and no amount of Obama hagiography by the left wing can hide this fact - that beginning with the Democrat-controlled Congress in 2007 and accelerating at warp speed since Obama's inauguration, the federal deficit has shot to heretofore unbelievable levels (click for larger view, link):

But today there is no one - and I mean no one - in the Democrat party who has the courage or even the basic conviction to say with Walter Mondale, "We are living on borrowed money and borrowed time. These deficits hike interest rates, clobber exports, stunt investment, kill jobs, undermine growth, cheat our kids and shrink our future."