Obama’s Budget Looks Dead on Arrival at the Senate: That, However, Is the Good News
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
If you shake out the Obama budget in terms of bold headlines, it’s really a class-warfare, tax-the-rich budget. Layer upon layer of tax hikes are piled on successful investors, small-business owners, and corporations.
The capital-gains tax goes from 15% to 24% (including Obamacare). The dividends tax goes from 15% to nearly 40%, and that’s not including the double tax on corporate profits embodied in dividends and capital gains. The Bush tax cuts for top earners are repealed. There’s the 30% Buffett-rule minimum tax on millionaires.
The carried-interest tax for private equity, hedge funds, and other investment partnerships goes from 15 to 39.6%. The estate tax jumps to 45%. Oil and gas companies get hit. And there’s probably more stuff in there I haven’t read yet. (Jimmy P. lays it out nicely.) Paul Ryan’s press release calls it $1.9 trillion tax hike, with $47 trillion in government spending over the next decade and the fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits.
Some kind of corporate tax reform may be released in a few weeks. But we don’t know much about it. While it may lower the top rate, it’s going to penalize U.S. firms operating abroad. Just what business does not want.
A Former Bush economist, Keith Hennessey, estimates that new proposals would create a ratio of 1.2 dollars of tax increases for every dollar cut in spending. Most of the spending cuts would slam Medicare doctors and other health providers. Unlikely to happen. There is no overall entitlement reform. Somehow the Obama budget is being offered as a substitute for the $1.2 trillion in spending cuts from the supercommittee. But the slam down in defense remains a huge problem.
Really, this is a budget that says we must raise taxes in order to raise spending. It’s a 1% vs. 99% budget. But if these tax hikes ever went through it would be a 100% whack at future economic growth.
Mr. Obama’s chief of staff, Jack Lew, was wrong yesterday to suggest that a budget passed in the Senate requires 60 votes. By law, budget reconciliation requires only 51 votes. But this budget is dead on arrival. All the Republicans and many of the Democrats are not going to vote for across-the-board tax hikes. That’s a good thing.
The question now is: What happens next? The U.S. is in a heap of fiscal trouble — on the verge of bankruptcy. What are we going to do about it?
