Obama's Bold New Plan: $3 In Tax Hikes For Every $1 In Spending Cuts

A "balanced approach:"

That means in terms of actual new proposals, the president’s plan totals about $1.2 trillion, of which the lion’s share comes from his longstanding vow to raise taxes back to Clinton-era rates on the top income brackets. The rest is $580 billion in reductions to formula-driven entitlement programs such as Social Security, with much of the savings coming from reducing overpayments and finding waste.

Those $580 billion in newly proposed cuts are dwarfed nearly three-to-one by the $1.5 trillion in additional taxes the president wants to see going forward.

Mr. Obama said his plan calls for $2 in cuts for every $1 in tax increases, but he reaches that by re-counting cuts already in law or in the planning pipeline, and by factoring in lower debt service costs.

AP notes that Obama's planning on taxing pretty much everybody:

Airline passengers would see their federal security fees double from $5 to $10 for a nonstop round-trip flight and triple to $15 by 2017, raising $25 billion over the coming decade.... And it'll cost corporate jet owners a new $100 fee for each flight.

...

Many of Obama's proposals are retreads from earlier budget proposals, including those submitted by his predecessors. Most have been rejected year after year. Some ideas, like requiring wealthier veterans to pay more for their health care, stir up opposition from powerful interest groups. Others, like the bigger security fee for flyers, seem too close to a ticket tax increase.

Administration budget documents describe the fees as savings.

I've cut one proposal out of there that I like a great deal: He proposes that federal workers should pay more towards their pension benefits, for example.

Not all of this is absurd. Just most of it. And the accounting is absurd: Calling increased taxes and fees "savings."

Obama is determined that he will not cut spending at all. That makes it impossible to even consider the "savings" he proposes. A drunk needs to acknowledge he has a problem with alcohol before anything else.

Most of this is in bad faith, anyway. Obama's "proposals" are not true proposals. He doesn't want a law; he wants an issue for the 2012 election. Every fake proposal he makes has a built-in poison pill to make it objectionable to Republicans, by design.

He's already announced his plan for 2012 is a Harry Truman-like run against a "Do-Nothing Congress." Obviously that plan can only work if Congress rejects his ideas; and he's making sure they will, by always sticking a poison pill in.

That's not an accident. And that's not Republican recalcitrance. That is a cynical non-plan by a man who is willing to let the economy tank further so long as he can claw some political advantage out of the wreckage.

One point five trillion in tax hikes from the man who just recently said "He's absolutely right, you don't want to raise taxes in the middle of a recession."

It should be noted that his wiggle-room there is always his claim that these taxes will not actually kick in for a couple of years, when the recession has ended.

You know, like it's already ended, supposedly.

posted by Ace at 05:28 PM

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