If you want people to save less, increase the tax on their savings. So, the President now threatens to pull the rug out from under IRAs. The President's defenders say that he is only going after very wealthy IRA users, but we know where it ends -- the average American will find his savings threatened by this increasingly autocratic regime in Washington.
How do you help poor people? Increase their taxes. So, the President proposes to increase the tax on cigarettes. Who are the smokers amongst us? The country club set? Or those without jobs and working at the lowest paid jobs in the country? Everyone knows the answer to that, including the President. He knows that smoking is mainly a habit indulged in by the poor, so he wacks the poor with one more tax hike. Smoking is almost unheard of among upper middle income folks. Obama has his sights set on socking it to the poorest demographic in the country.
What about entitlements? The President proposes cutting medicare reimbursements. He seems to think this will mean that medicare services will simply cost less with no reduction in services. Why not simply eliminate reimbursements entirely. Then everyone could get health care free! This is the logic of the President's medicare savings. We've seen it all before. There are now several states where a majority of doctors will not take medicare patients and that chorus of opt-outers is growing everyday. The President's plan is that health care will ultimately be free, unless you need a doctor or a hospital, in which case it will be unavailable.
As for cost-of-living adjustments on social security, that is merely a technical adjustment of limited significance in a world where people increasing live on social security far beyond our society's ability to provide the resources to support it.
Meanwhile the new budget continues to subsidize Obama's cronies where the losses continue to pile up in failed "green industry" activities, though Obama's cronies never seem to lose any of their own money in these ventures -- just taxpayer money.
So, tax thrift, reward those with uneconomic schemes and dreams that cannot make it in the market place, let the entitlements grow on to infinity, and sock it to the poor. Continue the same economic policies that have produced the worst economic recovery since the 1930s (the last time these kinds of policies were tried). Meanwhile, let the national debt soar on to infinity.
That's the President's new proposal. Not much of a surprise, given the last five years.
