President Obama’s budget proposal, released Monday, would institute a massive capital gains tax hike, boosting the tax rate on investment income to nearly twice what it was when Obama became president.
Obama seeks to raise the capital gains tax rate from 20 percent to 24.2 percent. Including the 3.8 percent surtax on capital gains included in Obamacare, the budget would effectively raise the rate from 23.8 percent to 28 percent.
To put that in perspective, the capital gains tax on Obama’s first day as president in 2009 was only 15 percent.
“Bill Clinton signed Republican legislation reducing the capital gains tax from 28% to 20%. The economy strengthened,” Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist said in a statement provided to The Daily Caller.
“During his presidency Barack Obama has increased the capital gains tax from 15% to 20%, then from 20% to 23.8% and now he wants to increase it again to 28%,” Norquist added. “As a result Obama’s ‘recovery’ has been the weakest since 1960. Obama has a sluggish economy and a very slow learning curve.”