President Barack Obama’s budget and political allies would be on track to raise taxes by $1.8 trillion over the next decade, if the tea party hadn’t won the 2010 election and given the GOP control of the House.
That’s the tax increase sought by Obama in his budget request for 2015 that he sent to Capitol Hill Tuesday.
But the request won’t go anywhere because the GOP has a majority in the House, courtesy of the 2010 tea party voters.
But Obama is hoping his $3.9 trillion budget request will boost his 2014 campaign, in which he hopes to maintain control of the Senate from insurgent tea party and GOP voters.
So far, the GOP remains united against the Obama budget, despite efforts by Obama to split the GOP via a business-backed push for increased low-wage immigration.
Obama’s budget request would also spike the federal government’s debt to $25 trillion in 2024, up from $10.6 trillion in January 2009, according to a study of the budget request by Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top-raking GOP senator on the Senate Budget Committee.
Federal spending would boost federal spending from $3.6 trillion in 2014 to $5.9 trillion in 2024, said the budget committee. That’s a boost of 63 percent, and up $300 billion from 2014 spending levels.
The budget request would also punch through the bipartisan budget agreement that was approved in December after years of negotiations by GOP and Democratic legislators.
He’s asking for $56 billion above the agreement’s 2015 level, and $114 billion above 2014’s spending, said Sessions’ statement.
Obama is also asking for $791 billion above the agreement’s 10-year spending target.
White House officials said their tax increases would be fair and would help lower-income Americans.
The president’s proposal would raise taxes for the top two percent of earners by limiting tax breaks in a variety of ways, principally by limiting deductions to 28 percent of individuals’ expenses, said Gene Sperling, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council.
The second tax increase is supposed to be the so-called “Buffett Rule,” which would impose a roughly 15 percent tax on the wealthiest Americans whose income isn’t significantly taxed.
The tax changes “will make our tax code more fair [and] more progressive, do better for people who want to invest in their future or college [and] for people trying to get up the ladder, and ask a little more of the most fortunate families,” Sperling said in a Tuesday budget briefing.
The budget proposal would also lower taxes for other Americans, said Sperling.
But those tax cuts are mostly spending programs, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, which provide payments to people who work for low wages. The EITC payments are often in excess of their federal tax payments.
GOP leaders slammed the White House’s effort to grow government.
“The President’s plan is an open declaration that deficits don’t matter, debt doesn’t matter, and that reality itself doesn’t matter,” Sessions said in his statement.
“It will further grow the government, shrink the middle class, and shield the political elite from accountability as they raid the nation’s wealth,” said Sessions.
Sessions pushed his budget criticism into a broader criticism of the federal government’s appetite.
“As Washington prospers, workers suffer. The causes are clear: energy restrictions that destroy jobs; regulations that hamstring productivity; a health law that shrinks the workforce; a welfare policy that penalizes work; a trade policy that sends jobs overseas; an immigration policy that reduces wages; and a crushing tax and debt burden that drains our vitality and growth,” he wrote.