The president's shiny new plan is gradually being unveiled..and so far, it amounts to $3 of taxes - oh, beg pardon,'new revenues' - for every dollar in spending cuts.
As I mentioned before, under Obama's plan anyone with a gross income of over $200,000 or more per year is no longer going to be able to itemize deductions, including those for home-mortgage interest, state and local property taxes and charitable donations.The plan also includes getting rid of the Bush-era tax cuts for anyone with a gross income of over $250,000. Just by coincidence, these categories include a huge chunk of small business owners where most of the hiring occurs.
That's how he plans to pay for yet another half trillion of stimulus!
Anyone remember this?
And this won't just affect 'the Rich'. The president's plan includes a whole plethora of new government fees, including doubling and then tripling the airport security fees from $5 to $15 paid on airline tickets, a fee increase for Fannie and Freddie that would add $15 per month to the cost of a new mortgage and a $200 fee to retired vets when they turn 65 to have the government pay their out-of-pocket Medicare expenses. They'd also pay more for non-generic prescription drugs.
One item of interest is that the president has thrown yet another group of former supporters off the cliff. His proposal also includes an additional 1.2% hike to what Federal workers now pay to contribute to their pensions.
"Why (would) the administration ... propose a Social Security payroll tax holiday in its jobs bill, but simultaneously suggest a tax increase for middle-class federal workers?" asked Joseph Beaudoin, president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association.
Don't ask me why President Obama does anything, Mr. Beaudoin. You wouldn't like my answer. But the point is that the president now sees himself as channeling Harry Truman in 1948 and wants to beat the class warfare drum HARD, so he can run against that racist, do-nothing Tea Party Republican Congress. So he deliberately put together a shell of a proposal that the Republicans are going to oppose, so he can blame them when things inevitably get worse economically.
GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell actually had something good and pungent to say about this chicanery for once:“Veto threats, a massive tax hike, phantom savings, and punting on entitlement reform is not a recipe for economic or job growth — or even meaningful deficit reduction. “Veto threats, a massive tax hike, phantom savings, and punting on entitlement reform is not a recipe for economic or job growth — or even meaningful deficit reduction. The good news is that the joint committee is taking this issue far more seriously than the White House.”
What I'd like to see is the Republicans put together some actual legislation of their own and present it to the president an dthe nation as a united,take-it-or-leave-it proposition on the maximum compromise they're willing to accept.
Oh wait, they already did that when they passed cut, cap and balance in the House and every Senate Republican voted for it, back during the debt ceiling debate. Except the GOP leadership lost their gonads and forgot about the take-it-or-leave-it part.
Hopefully, they learned something from that fiasco.
2 comments:
If the Republicans cave on this, they deserve to be voted out.
President Obama is trying to save jobs. It's that Tea Party keeping people unemployed and making this recession.
Republicans don't care about working folks.
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