Can you guess who said this?
"Normally, you don’t raise taxes in a recession, which is why we haven’t and why we’ve instead cut taxes. So I guess what I’d say to Scott is – his economics are right. You don’t raise taxes in a recession. We haven’t raised taxes in a recession.”
Or this?
“We have not proposed a tax hike for the wealthy that would take effect in the middle of a recession. Even the proposals that have come out of Congress – which by the way were different from the proposals I put forward – still wouldn’t kick in until after the recession was over."
Or, how about this?
"So he’s absolutely right, the last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the middle of a recession because that would just suck up – take more demand out of the economy and put business further in a hole.”
President Obama was the author of all of those words and he spoke them in August 2009 during an interview with NBC's Chuck Todd, who posed this question submitted by audience-member Scott Ferguson of Elkhart, Indiana: “Explain how raising taxes on anyone during a deep recession is going to help with the economy.”
Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard dug those Obama gems out of his genuinely immense political memory bank, and pointed to the multiple questions thereby raised for the present negotiations between the chief executive and congressional Republicans on either a "grand bargain" on the budget, or a short-term deal on the same set of issues. Well worth your reading.