Knowing that the election is less than four months away and he’ll have little to show on the economic front, President Obama today revived the battle over the Bush tax cuts which were extended for two years after their originally planned 2010 expiration. However, Obama’s new proposal would extend them for just next year and target them to families making less than $250,000 a year – those more wealthy would revert to the Clinton-era tax rate of nearly 40 percent. That represents a rate increase of 13 percent over the current tax rate of 35 cents per dollar.
This election-year maneuver will make for some strange bedfellows. For Democrats, the choice of supporting their President also comes at the risk of hypocrisy, as many have blamed the Bush-era cuts for the rampant deficits piled up over the last decade. Instead, Democratic legislative party leaders like Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Charles Schumer have pressed for a higher income threshold for tax hikes, calling for a true millionaire’s tax by raising the rates only on families which make seven figures.
(continued at Examiner.com…)