Spending reductions in the tax code

I haven't listened to the president's speeches for the past couple of years, because they remind me of how stupid I was to have voted for him in the 2008 New Hampshire primary. Comedian Jon Stewart points out that I thereby missed a particularly fine piece of political sophistry, where Mr. Obama explained Wednesday evening that he was going to reduce the deficit through "spending reductions in the tax code." This is how Mr. Stewart riffed on that bit of bafflegab:

What? “Spending reductions in the tax code”? The tax code isn’t where we spend, it’s where we collect, and that…. ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I guess what you said is tax “code”, code for raising taxes. You managed to talk about a tax hike as a spending reduction. Can we afford that and the royalty checks you’re going to have to send to George Orwell? That’s the weirdest way of… just say “tax hike”! That’s like saying, “I’m not going on a diet, I’m going to add calories to my excluded food intake!”

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford