Barack Obama’s new budget is a $1.5 trillion tax increase

   Apparently Barack Obama feels as if only rich people smoke or use tanning booths because he is still clinging to his claim that he has not raised taxes on a majority of Americans, so it was with great anticipation that we awaited Barack Obama’s latest budget proposal to see exactly how much Barack Obama felt that the average American taxpayer should have to “sacrifice.”

  According to this article, an analysis of Barack Obama’s new budget shows that it includes over $1.5 trillion in tax increases over the next ten years. According to the article linked to above, here are the tax increases which were included in the budget that Barack Obama unveiled earlier today:

• Raising the top marginal income tax rate (at which a majority of small business profits face taxation) from 35% to 39.6%.  This is a $709 billion/10 year tax hike
• Raising the capital gains and dividends rate from 15% to 20%
• Raising the death tax rate from 35% to 45% and lowering the death tax exemption amount from $5 million ($10 million for couples) to $3.5 million.  This is a $98 billion/ten year tax hike
• Capping the value of itemized deductions at the 28% bracket rate.  This will effectively cut tax deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions, property taxes, state and local income or sales taxes, out-of-pocket medical expenses, and unreimbursed employee business expenses.  A new means-tested phaseout of itemized deductions limits them even more.  This is a $321 billion/ten year tax hike
• New bank taxes totaling $33 billion over ten years
• New international corporate tax hikes totaling $129 billion over ten years
• New life insurance company taxes totaling $14 billion over ten years
• Massive new taxes on energy, including LIFO repeal, Superfund, domestic energy manufacturing, and many others totaling $120 billion over ten years
• Increasing unemployment payroll taxes by $15 billion over ten years
• Taxing management capital gains in an investment partnership (“carried interest”) as ordinary income.  This is a tax hike of $15 billion over ten years
• A giveaway to the trial lawyers—not letting companies deduct the cost of punitive damages from a lawsuit settlement.  This is a tax hike of $300 million over ten years
• Increasing tax penalties, information reporting, and IRS information sharing.  This is a ten-year tax hike of $20 billion.

  He plans on raising capital gains and dividend taxes, the death tax, limiting deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions, property taxes, state and local income or sales taxes, out-of-pocket medical expenses, and unreimbursed employee business expenses, raising bank and corporation taxes, as well as raising the taxes on life insurance companies and new energy taxes.

  Some of these taxes will directly affect all Americans while some will indirectly affect the average American citizen because those taxes which target banks, corporations, and the energy companies will ultimately be passed on down to the consumers–in other words, the American people. The dirty little secret here is the fact that corporations do not pay for the tax increases from their profits because they raise the price of their products or their services to reflect the increase in the cost of doing business–they pass the tax increases down to the American people.

  While Barack Obama may gain support with his base because on the surface it appears as if he is soaking the rich, the truth is that once again his tax increases will soak the average American consumer, but Barack Obama knows that the far left will not see it that way because they are blinded by the class warfare that the Democrats have been engaged in for so many years.

  Many of the taxes included in this new budget are not new; Barack Obama proposed many of these very same taxes when the Democrats controlled both houses of the Congress, but even the Democrat controlled Congress rejected them. Barack Obama must know that if the Democrat controlled Congress was unwilling to pass these tax increases that there is even less of a chance that the Republican controlled Congress would pass these tax increases, so the question I have is this: Why would Barack Obama resurrect tax increases he couldn’t pass even when he had a Democrat Congress knowing full well that the Republican controlled Congress would never go along with them?

I think the answer is simple, he wants to force a showdown with Republicans that threatens to shut down the government because he feels it will turn out to be politically expedient for him just like it was for Bill Clinton in the 1990’s. Either way, Barack Obama feels as if he will be a winner; if the Republican controlled Congress gives in to his demands he will effectively punish those people and corporations which are successful (at least on paper, because as I stated above, these tax increases will be passed on to us) thus gaining a huge victory with his base, or he will force the Republicans to shut down the federal government–and he feels as if that if this does indeed happen he will gain a political victory with the American people because he will be able to blame the Republicans for shutting down the government even though he proposed a budget that he knew they could never agree to in the first place.

  On the surface it appears to me that Barack Obama is playing a political game with the economy and the budget–he is looking to benefit from a political standpoint by forcing the Republicans to either shut down the government or agree to $1.5 trillion in tax increases and I find the fact that he would put the best interest of America behind his own personal interests to be absolutely disgusting.

  Just once I would like to see a Washington politician put the interests of the American people above their own political interests–wouldn’t that be refreshing for a change?!