Obama wouldn’t lie to get elected, wouldn’t he?
By Daniel at 8 July, 2009, 11:36 pm
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WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama promised to fix health care and trim the federal budget deficit, all without raising taxes on anyone but the wealthiest Americans. It’s a promise he’s already broken and will likely have to break again. Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress have already increased tobacco taxes — which disproportionately hit the poor — to pay for extending health coverage to 4 million children in working low-income families.
Now, lawmakers are looking for more revenues to help pay for providing medical insurance to millions more who lack it at a projected cost of $1 trillion over the next decade.
The floated proposals include increasing taxes on alcohol, which could raise $62 billion over the next decade, and a new tax on sugary drinks such as soda, which could raise $52 billion.
Senate Democrats this week pretty much rejected a proposal by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., to tax health benefits, an idea that Obama repeatedly criticized during the presidential election campaign but has refused to take off the table.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said negotiators are still looking for revenue alternatives. Asked during an interview with The Associated Press if they included tax increases on families with incomes less than $250,000 a year, Schumer said, “There are lots of things on the table now.”
The health care bill is a long way from Obama’s desk, but tax experts say the debate illustrates a stark reality: It is simply implausible for the vast majority of Americans to get a free ride while the nation tackles such an incredibly difficult — and expensive — issue.
“We’re all going to have to contribute,” said Eugene Steuerle, a former treasury official in the Reagan administration and now vice president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.
Paying for Obama’s agenda might be easier, Steuerle said, if the nation wasn’t already facing massive federal budget deficits for the foreseeable future.
“The dilemma is trying to do the new while the old is still unpaid for,” Steuerle said.
The federal budget deficit is projected to hit an unprecedented $1.8 trillion this year — on top of a national debt that has already topped $11 trillion. Obama insists that any bill on health care or climate change not add to the debt.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_obama_tax_promise;_ylt=Au0TdfdNiYzF7MFhTVPjiDN0fNdF
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