By Steve Hynd
There's a nice run-down on the main talking points of Obama's planned election budget over at the Beeb.
The proposal includes $1.5 trillion (�950bn) in new taxes, much from allowing Bush-era tax cuts to expire.
...His plan to allow George W Bush-era tax cuts to expire would affect families making $250,000 or more per year.
The president would also put in place a rule named after billionaire Warren Buffett to tax households making more than $1m annually at a rate of at least 30%.
In a populist touch, over the next decade, the plan would levy a new $61bn tax on financial institutions, in an effort to recover the costs of the financial bailout.
And it would raise a further $41bn by cutting tax breaks for oil, gas and coal companies.
...It means the president would not fulfil his 2009 promise to half the federal deficit by the end of his first term.
I say "talking points" because this is clearly a budget plan that will never be realized and isn't intended to be. As the BBC's Adam Brookes notes in a sidebar:
President Obama is seeking to ignite passion and commitment in his supporters as his re-election effort gets underway. And that is what his budget speech was all about.
Mr Obama sought to lay down the economic vision that will define his re-election campaign. His plan does hack away at government spending. But Mr Obama's senior advisers have said bluntly that this is not an austerity budget.
Austerity, they say, will only slow down recovery. Little wonder his Republican opponents in Congress, for whom tax increases are a diabolical heresy, are raging at the plan. They are swearing to dismember it, which they can and will.
But Mr Obama's aim now is not really to persuade a furious gridlocked Congress of anything. It's to persuade frightened American voters that he can lead them back to prosperity.
It's a savvy move, I'll admit. Obama intends painting the GOP as the party "of the rich, for the rich" and his own party as being all for the little guy, just for long enough to get re-elected. Then he and the Dems can quietly go back to being the other party of the rich, for the rich, with impunity.
Update AP has an agency-by-agency guide to the winners and losers under Obama's proposed budget. the biggest losers in percentage terms compared to the 2012 budget are Education (-52%), Labor (-35.7%), Transportation (-39.4%), Housing and Urban Development (-21.3%). The biggest winners are Energy (+41%), Commerce (+15.6%), State (+13.8%). No comment from me required, there.
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