In Barack Obama’s America, it’s always opposites day.
“We can’t simply cut our way to prosperity,” said the president upon signing the fiscal cliff deal — a deal that included no cuts in federal spending. “Cutting spending has to go hand-in-hand with further reforms to our tax code so that the wealthiest corporations and individuals can’t take advantage of loopholes.”
But Obama himself demanded that the fiscal cliff deal include billions in tax breaks for Obama’s corporate cronies — including Big Green.
“A Republican Senate aide familiar with the cliff negotiations tells me the White House wanted permanent extensions of a whole slew of corporate tax credits,” reports Washington Examiner reporter Tim Carney. “When Senate Republicans said no, ‘the White House (was) absolutely insistent,’ another aide tells me.”
“General Electric and Citigroup, for instance, (got) a tax provision that allows multinational corporations to defer U.S. taxes by moving profits into offshore financial subsidiaries,” continues Carney. “The K Street firm Capitol Tax Partners, led by Treasury Department alumni from the Clinton administration, represented financial clients like Citi, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. . . . CTP represented green energy companies like GE and the American Wind Energy Association. These companies won extension and expansion of the production tax credit for wind energy. Hollywood hired CTP, too: The Motion Picture Association of America won an extension on tax credits for film production.”
If this sounds like a contradiction of everything Obama says, it is. But it is only a continuation of Obama’s first term handouts to the One Percent — from green car tax breaks for millionaires like Leo DiCaprio and Sen. Carl Levin to “smart grid” payouts to Big Utility.
Audacious? Yes. Audacious, too, that most of the media continues to ignore it.