'Spending reductions in the tax code'?

Spending reductions in the tax code…that’s what President Obama called the thing that we commonly call “tax cuts” in his speech today.

Essentially tossing aside the budget he submitted just two months ago, Mr. Obama called for much deeper defense and domestic spending cuts and said while he will not trim benefit payment from Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, more money can be squeezed out of the latter two programs in other ways.

The president also called for undoing the Bush tax cuts for upper-income taxpayers, and for canceling other tax cuts many of them receive such as the mortgage interest deduction — which he called “spending reductions in the tax code.”

Love ’em or hate ’em, cutting someone’s tax rate does not equal an increase in spending, in the tax code or anywhere else. It’s simply money the government doesn’t take in. Therefore, getting rid of their tax cut does not equal eliminating a “spending reduction” in the tax code. Or anywhere else.

I’d like to commend President Obama for his backhanded honesty on this, though. He has finally admitted that he thinks the money that you work for belongs to the government before it belongs to you. He just had to utter the most Orwellian phrase ever spoken by an American president to get the admission out there.