Obama Tax Hike on Wealthy An Actual Tax Hike, Ed Schultz Finally Admits

Two months after President Obama whacked the wealthy with higher taxes, Ed Schultz is flip-flopping on his previous denial that this occurred.

Back in late February, Schultz resorted to accounting gimmickry to bolster his insistent claim that Obama had not increased taxes on well-heeled Americans. (audio clips after page break)

Here is Schultz's convoluted explanation for this on Feb. 22 (audio; transcript that follows starts at 0:47 in the clip) --

Liberals, we can't let them get away with this. There was legislation on the books that expired. It expired. President Obama didn't do that. He didn't have anything to do with it, it expired. Back in the lame-duck session of the Congress in 2010, the ten-year window on that was up. And what did he do? He extended it two more years because Democrats wanted to keep the economy cooking. So now what has happened? Well, the Bush tax cuts expired on Dec. 31st, the deal was cut that the top 2 percent would go back to 39 percent, as the legislation expired, but the middle class was protected and taxes did not go up on the middle class. So now they're officially the Obama tax cuts. Ninety-eight percent of Americans stayed at the same rate under President Obama's plan. He allowed the legislation to expire on the top 2 percent and they're claiming that's a tax increase. No, it's not. It would be a tax increase if you were to go beyond the 39.6 percent because that would be new territory where we've never been before.

As I pointed out after hearing these delusional claims, Schultz not only got it wrong about the top tax rate never previously being higher than 39.6 percent, he credited Obama as instrumental in extending the Bush tax rates during the lame-duck in 2010, then dismissed Obama as mere bystander when all the Bush tax cuts expired at the end of December. Had Obama and congressional Democrats wanted to extend the tax cuts across the board, that's what would have happened since Republicans already supported this. Instead, Obama and the Democrats pushed through a higher tax rate solely on "millionaires and billionaires" -- Obama having harped obsessively about this during the campaign -- and Republicans weakened by their 2012 election losses weren't able to stop them.

Not only that, Schultz on Feb. 22 laughably referred to what took place at the start of 2013 as the "Obama tax cuts" -- when in fact taxes rose for most people, first, because of the two-year payroll tax cut expiring; second, the highest rate jumping from 35 to 36.9 percent (more than ten percent in percentage terms), and third, all the other tax rates staying where they were. Only in the Orwellian lexicon of the left can this be touted as the "Obama tax cuts."

"Now they're claiming that's a tax increase," Schultz said Feb. 22 about the highest rate jumping to nearly 40 percent. Yesterday on his radio show, Schultz ended the charade that this wasn't a tax hike, even though more people will surrender more of their money to government as a result, the classic definition of a tax hike (h/t for audio, Brian Maloney at mrctv.org) --

We've added 36 months of private-sector job growth. We're at a total of 6.4 million jobs added since we were in the toilet, a very solid sign that the economy is moving in the correct direction. Remember this guy? You can't raise taxes on the job creators! (imitates George W. Bush). Oh yes you can because we just raised taxes on the job creators! Remember our old buddy Bushy? ... Well, we have raised taxes on the alleged job creators is what we've done with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts which kicked in on Jan. 1st, 2013, not too long ago. Well, the job creators, they're not as pissed off as everybody thought they were going to be, apparently!

At this rate, we should hear from Schultz sometime in May that the sequester was Obama's idea all along and he emulated Chicken Little in exaggerating its impact on the economy.