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Obama Budget Taxes Richest to Help Pay for Health Care
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Feb 25, 2009 07:20pm |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - New York Times |
| News Date | Thursday, February 26, 2009 01:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By JACKIE CALMES and ROBERT PEAR
Published: February 25, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Obama will propose further tax increases on the affluent to help pay for his promise to make health care more accessible and affordable, administration officials said on Wednesday. That plan, coming after recent years in which more wealth became concentrated at the top of the income scale, introduces a politically volatile new edge to the emerging Congressional debate over the new president’s top domestic priorities.
Mr. Obama will also propose in the budget outline he releases on Thursday to use revenues from the centerpiece of his environmental policy — a plan under which companies will have to purchase permits to exceed pollution emission caps — to pay for an extension of a two-year tax credit that benefits low and middle-income people.
The combined effect of the two proposals, on top of Mr. Obama’s existing plan to roll back the Bush-era income tax reductions on upper-income households, would be a pronounced move to redistribute wealth and reimpose a substantially larger share of the tax burden on the most affluent taxpayers.
Administration officials said the president would seek in the budget he releases on Thursday to cap itemized tax deductions for high-income people, such as couples earning more than about $250,000 a year.
The officials said the resulting revenues would account for about half of a $634 billion “reserve fund” that Mr. Obama will set aside in his budget to begin addressing health care. The other half would come from Medicare savings, including an end to billions of dollars in subsidies to insurance companies under the Medicare Advantage program, and other possible tax-law changes. |
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