Media cover for Democrat tax lies

L. Brent Bozell III:

MEDIA "correction" squads are insisting that John McCain can't say Barack Obama will raise taxes, no matter how much that announcing Democrats will raise taxes is like announcing the sun will rise.

In 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle suggested Bill Clinton would raise taxes on the middle class - that everyone making over $36,000 could face a tax hike. Media "experts" accused the him of mangling "facts." Clinton was elected - and passed the largest tax increase in US history, right down to the middle class.

"It was Quayle who repeatedly twisted and misstated the facts," CNN reporter Brooks Jackson pronounced after the vice-presidential debate. On ABC, Jeff Green-field proclaimed: "Independent examination of this charge by, for example, press organizations, has found it, to say the least, misleading."

Cut to Feb. 18, 1993, when USA Today admitted: "Looks like Dan Quayle was right. Last year's vice-presidential debate . . . produced an accurate prediction from Quayle about the Clinton budget plan . . . The final plan, according to Clinton officials, will hit those making $30,000 and above."

Predictions about what a politician will do are predictions, not facts. Obviously, some predictions can be wilder - but predicting a massive tax hike under Democrats doesn't qualify as wild.

This goes not just for debates but also for commercials. In a fall '92 TV ad, the Bush-Quayle campaign used its estimates of how much Clinton would raise taxes, and all the networks leaped on it like starving men on a crust of bread.

NBC's Lisa Myers said "facts" were not on the GOP's side: "President Bush's new ad portrays Bill Clinton as a big taxer and a danger to the middle class . . . That's misleading. In fact, Clinton has proposed cutting taxes to the sort of people in this ad." In 20-20 hindsight, the fact is that Lisa Myers ended up with egg on her face.

In 2008, reporters and columnists touting Obama are repeatedly citing numbers by something called the Tax Policy Center. You'll never hear that this is a project operated by two liberal-Democrat think tanks. The figures suggest Obama will actually cut middle-class taxes more than John McCain. That, of course, assumes that President Obama will follow his plan to the letter, and that a newly elected liberal House and Senate will rubber-stamp his alleged tax cut for "95 percent" of Americans.

That, by the way, is a serious math error. How is it possible to cut 95 percent of Americans' taxes when the Tax Foundation reports that 40 percent of Americans don't pay any income tax? (This math apparently is too sophisticated for the guardians of "fact," who are nowhere to be found.)

...

Obama gets there by providing a "tax credit" to those not paying. In other words he is going to send a check to the 40 percent who pay no taxes. That is usually called welfare and not a tax cut. I think Palin and McCain should call Obama on this politics of fraud.

Obama started this campaign by saying he would repeal the Bush tax cuts which would have been a huge tax increase he would use to pay for his programs. Now he is saying that only the top five percent will have a tax increase and he is going to give away money to those who don't pay taxes. It sounds like a vote buying scam with other peoples money.

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