"Just For The Rich" And Other Obama Lies About the "Bush Tax Cuts"

I received an email from the Obama Campaign last night which spoke about the progressive plan to maintain the "Bush tax cuts for households making <$250K and individuals making <$200K.  The letter (addressed from Stephanie Cutter)  said in part:

Right now, President Obama is asking you to think about what $2,000 a year means to you and your family -- because Congress needs to hear it.

The Senate has passed a bill that stops taxes from going up for 98 percent of American families, and asks those who can afford it to pay a little more. If the House follows suit, President Obama is ready to sign it as soon as it hits his desk.

If they fail to do so, a typical middle-class family of four will see their taxes go up by $2,000 in just a few short weeks.

Wanting to do my civic duty and do what the commander-in-chief asked, I gave it some thought and came up with lots of different things I could do with $2,000 (most of them involved supporting conservative candidates in 2014).  But another thought kept gnawing at me. 

For the past five years or so I have been hearing that the Bush tax cuts only helped millionaires and billionaires. But if killing those tax cuts will raise taxes for the average "middle-class" family by $2,000---doesn't it mean that those "Bush tax cuts" helped the "middle-class" also? And if that it the case---doesn't it mean that the progressives have been lying to us?

Another thing the President has been telling us is the "Bush Tax" cuts have increased the deficit.  But according to this analysis by Investors Business Daily (via Instapundit) the tax cuts lead to closing the budget gap via higher tax revenues.

Obama argued voters made it clear in the election that they don't want to go back to Republican policies that "cost" the Treasury revenues and "blew up the deficit," as he told them repeatedly during the campaign.

The Washington media by and large share these assumptions. And they're driving the debate over what to do about the federal budget crisis before Jan. 1, when the tax cuts and spending programs are set to expire.

But the assumptions are faulty, based largely on political demagoguery rather than hard numbers — including ones certified by Obama's own fiscal policy advisers and bean counters in the White House.

Turn to Pages 411-413 of his 2012 Economic Report of the President, published by the Council of Economic Advisers. They show that "the math," as Obama is wont to say, in fact does add up for tax cuts.

Stronger economic growth expanded the tax base and brought in so much revenue that Bush more than halved the deficit over that period. The budget gap plunged to $160.7 billion from $377.6 billion, according to the president's report.

Perhaps the most impressive statistic appears on Page 412, one that undercuts Obama's core argument against continuing the Bush tax cuts.

The post-tax-cut surge in economic growth and tax revenues helped drive down the deficit from 3.5% of gross domestic product in 2004 to 2.6% in 2005, to 1.9% in 2006 and to a manageable 1.2% in 2007.

Based on Bush fiscal policies, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected budget deficits of 0.7% to 1.5% of GDP for the years 2008 through 2011. The CBO even predicted surpluses for the subsequent years through 2018.

 Not bad for a guy they say was an economic disaster. Despite all of the lies we have been hearing from the progressives over the past five+ years before the mortgage crisis which was largely caused by progressive policies, the "Bush tax cuts" were helping people of all incomes and moving the total federal budget toward a surplus.

Gee Stephanie Cutter didn't mention any of that in her email.