Riding higher in the polls than his Republican rivals in Congress, President Barack Obama is trying just about every trick in the book to continue raising taxes. Every trick, that is, except for coming up with a true deficit-reduction plan.

Recently, Obama granted interviews with eight television anchors across the country — from Boston to Baltimore, and Oklahoma City to Honolulu — to press his case for what he calls a "balanced approach" to deficit reduction. Translation: Let's raise taxes — again.

"If Congress allows this meat-cleaver approach to take place, it will jeopardize our military readiness; it will eviscerate job-creating investments in education and energy and medical research," Obama said, making his current pitch against allowing across-the-board spending cuts agreed to two summers ago to take place. "These cuts are not smart. They are not fair. They will hurt our economy."

The president is correct on one point: The $85 billion in automatic spending cuts due to take effect on Friday were never meant to happen. Absent an eleventh-hour deal, the "sequestration" that will begin to force spending cuts across the federal government — half from defense and half from domestic programs — was supposed to force Washington to come together to cut the deficit.

When that earlier deal was made, in summer 2011, Republicans thought they'd win the White House and Obama was trying to get the debt ceiling raised without cutting spending.

The president appears to be counting on his relative strength in the polls to avoid the spending cuts once again.

Obama's approval rating stands at between 51 percent and 55 percent in recent polls, compared to numbers in the 20s for congressional Republicans. And a recent poll by the Pew Research Center and USA Today found that, if no deal is reached, 49 percent of Americans will blame Republicans, 31 percent, Obama.

But the president should be careful. The same poll found 70 percent of Americans agreeing that major legislation to reduce the federal budget deficit is essential this year.

And the American people are not fools. They will no doubt soon see through Obama's empty rhetoric on deficit reduction. For starters, his proposal to eliminate roughly $21 billion in tax breaks for oil companies over 10 years became a White House priority only after Republicans took control of the House in 2011. Its likelihood to harm domestic energy production is appreciated on both sides of the aisle, which accounts for its failure to become law when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the White House in 2009-10.

Then consider that there's very little beyond tax increases in the president's deficit reduction tool kit. A citizen would search in vain for deficit reduction as a priority issue on the White House website. And under a category called "Reform & Fiscal Responsibility," what does the administration brag about? The Budget Control Act of 2011, which was, you guessed it, the "meat cleaver" Obama is now decrying.

The White House website says the act he said "will hurt our economy" just days ago "mandates historic levels of spending cuts — nearly $1 trillion — done in a way that will not harm the economic recovery."

With our nation's debt at more than 70 percent of its annual economic output, the president should stop playing both sides of this issue, stop seeking airtime on local TV news stations, and stand with the American people for deficit reduction.