In analyzing propaganda techniques, the Office of Strategic Services once remarked, “People will believe a big lie sooner than a little one, and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.” Even in the United States, a free society with instantaneous communication and competitive media, blatant untruths stated by politicians regularly go unchallenged. President Obama, for instance, has never had to take responsibility for his failures or broken promises; he simply invents a fictional narrative of his administration and repeats it ad nauseam. Obama claims to support lower taxes and a balanced budget, but as with all big lies, the truth is just the opposite.

“Let me repeat,” Obama intoned during his State of the Union address, “We cut taxes.  We cut taxes for 95 percent of working families.” Yet the president never actually cut any tax rates.  Obama instituted several short term tax credits, such as the “Making Work Pay” credit, which provided low income individuals a payment of $400, totaling a refund of $30 a week.  In addition, most of the individuals who received the tax credit were paying no taxes and already receiving other government payments. While Obama claims to have “cut taxes,” he only succeeded in expanding welfare to the lower 40 percent of Americans. Unlike the tax cuts of the previous administration, his tax credits have no chance of creating jobs or spurring economic growth.

However, Obama is not content to simply leave tax rates the same as they were before his election. His administration’s budget contains dozens of tax hikes, totaling up to $989 billion, and many of those tax increases, such as letting the Bush tax cuts expire, will affect small businesses and individuals making less than $250,000. Should the Democrats get their way on healthcare reform, the president will limit medical tax deductions, increase Medicare payroll taxes and levy hidden taxes on health care and insurance providers.  Indeed, one is hard pressed to find any tax that Obama does not want to raise.

Continuing to portray himself as practical moderate, the president insisted that he is “prepared to freeze government spending for three years,” but his proposed freeze would only affect 13 percent of the total budget, saving a pitiful $20 billion out of the trillions he has already spent. In just one year, President Obama has already quadrupled President Bush’s massive deficit. While the previous administration raised the debt by a total of $2.5 trillion through 2008, Obama’s budget would add an additional $4.9 trillion of debt through 2016.

Obama lied about tax cuts. He lied when he promised not to raise taxes on those making less than $250,000. He campaigned on change and complained about historic debts, only to double down on Bush’s mistakes. The big lie is that the president is a moderate, and during his first year as president, the American people believed it. No longer. He is a radical, liberal spendthrift, and his destructive policies must be stopped.