what he means by "tax cuts"

An interesting meme that I've been hearing about in the last few days is how Obama has actually "cut taxes" for "95% of working Americans," or variations thereof.

(I won't even comment at the arrogance that comes across when liberals say, "They should be thanking the president for cutting their taxes instead of protesting" — something that both Bob Beckel and Alan Colmes have both implied in recent appearances on Fox News.)

Then there's the confrontation between our local Tea Party participant and the "party crasher" who kept insisting that Obama had cut taxes but couldn't name a specific one.

I had not seen any cuts in tax rates in the last two years, and, if anything, the income tax rates are due to increase when the Bush tax cuts expire.

So what is this "Obama cuts taxes" meme all about?

Well, finally, Bob Owens on Pajamas Media provided elucidation by citing this excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article written in 2008, When Barack Obama was still a candidate:

For the Obama Democrats, a tax cut is no longer letting you keep more of what you earn. In their lexicon, a tax cut includes tens of billions of dollars in government handouts that are disguised by the phrase “tax credit.” Mr. Obama is proposing to create or expand no fewer than seven such credits for individuals. …

Here’s the political catch. All but the clean car credit would be “refundable,” which is Washington-speak for the fact that you can receive these checks even if you have no income-tax liability. In other words, they are an income transfer — a federal check — from taxpayers to nontaxpayers. Once upon a time we called this “welfare,” or in George McGovern’s 1972 campaign a “Demogrant.” Mr. Obama’s genius is to call it a tax cut.

The Tax Foundation estimates that under the Obama plan 63 million Americans, or 44% of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability and most of those would get a check from the IRS each year. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis estimates that by 2011, under the Obama plan, an additional 10 million filers would pay zero taxes while cashing checks from the IRS.

The total annual expenditures on refundable “tax credits” would rise over the next 10 years by $647 billion to $1.054 trillion, according to the Tax Policy Center. This means that the tax-credit welfare state would soon cost four times actual cash welfare.

It's never been about tax cuts: it's always been about redistribution of wealth.