Washington – Drawing a bright line with congressional Republicans, President Barack Obama is proposing $1.5 trillion in new tax revenue as part of his long-term deficit reduction plan, according to senior administration officials.
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The president on Monday will announce a proposal that includes the new taxes, nearly $250 billion in reductions in Medicare spending, $330 billion in cuts in other mandatory benefit programs, and savings of $1 trillion from the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The plan includes no changes in Social Security and does not include an increase in the Medicare eligibility age, which the president had considered this summer.
All in all, the president’s plan is as much an opening bid as it is a political statement designed to draw contrasts with Republicans, who control the House of Representatives.
The new taxes in particular have little or no chance of passing Congress as proposed. Republicans were already lining up against the president’s tax proposal before they even knew the magnitude of what he intended to recommend.
The $1.5 trillion in tax revenue would include about $800 billion realized over 10 years from repealing the Bush-era tax rates for couples making more than $250,000. It also would place limits on deductions for wealthy filers and end certain corporate loopholes and subsidies for oil and gas companies.
By adding the tax revenue, about $580 billion in proposed mandatory spending cuts, the savings from troop withdrawals and $1 trillion in spending cuts already in place, the combined deficit reduction would total about $4 trillion over 120 years. The administration also identified $430 billion in savings from lower interest payment on the debt.
Obama backed away from proposing sweeping changes to Medicare, following the advice of fellow Democrats that it would only give political cover to a privatization plan supported by House Republicans that turned to be unpopular with older Americans.
Administration officials said 90 percent of the $248 billion in 10-year Medicare cuts would be squeezed from service providers. The plan does shift some additional costs to beneficiaries, but those changes would not start until 2017, and administration officials made clear as well that Obama would veto any Medicare cuts that aren’t paired with tax increases on upper-income people.
The president’s plan also called for cuts of $72 billion over ten years from Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for low-income people and the severely disabled. States, hospitals and advocates for the poor are expected to resist those.
Obama cab say what he wants and the GOP will block it. And next year he will be voted out of office!
Obama, Read my lips: “CAPITAL FLIGHT”
According to this brilliant leader of ours, 150,000 or 250,000 is now “a million”. HUH? Higher taxes on these people when the tax rate was only to go up for “millionares”. They dont realize that it is the wealthy who create jobs- not the poor. Give a tax break to the wealthy and they will have enough money to hire another worker… you can tie the tax break into highering more which is what some analysts have tried. No tax hikes- just “if you can add another worker, for every full calendar year the worker is on the books you get a certain percentage of taxes decreased from your businness”. A per worker, per year. So the more you hire, the more you save on taxes (but those individual workers get paid, spur the economy and then pay taxes as well as the government saving money from stopping food stamps ect).
Dont tax those of us who succeeded. Give us an incentive to hire more! It will be better in the long run!
“the combined deficit reduction would total about $4 trillion over 120 years.”
So the administration is really looking at this in the long term only!
Whoever EVER voted for a democrat is largely responsible for the exorbitant spending by the government! Let them pay!!
“Administration officials said 90 percent of the $248 billion in 10-year Medicare cuts would be squeezed from service providers.”
Already no decent doctor accepts any Medicaid patients, and many don’t accept Medicare. What this will accomplish if allowed through (I think we can count on Republicans to block this travesty) is that no decent doctor would accept Medicare patients as well. And thus the older folks who can pay their own way will still have access to top doctors and the ones who can’t and have to rely on Medicare will be forced either into the offices who accept Medicare because they can’t make living any other way, and we know how good they are, or into the offices of the Obamacare government doctors, and we know how good they are.
Part of me is tempted to say that these Medicare recipients deserved what they would get because they voted for this abomination, but I can’t be that mean. And besides, older folks with brains didn’t.
Obama has the right plan. There is no way out of this deficit if we do not cut some spending and do not increase taxes among those with an exorbitant amount of capital on their hands. This only makes sense.