President Barack Obama is meeting strong Democratic Party resistance to his proposal to reduce tax deductions enjoyed by upper-income Americans and could be forced to drop or modify the idea.Geitner sounds ready to drop the idea.
Mr. Obama in his budget blueprint last week proposed a cap on itemized deductions for mortgage interest and charitable donations to help pay for his health-care overhaul. The plan would cost wealthier taxpayers about $318 billion in new taxes over 10 years, according to government estimates.
But after objections from Democratic lawmakers, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner appeared to suggest at one point Wednesday that the administration was willing to consider dropping or modifying the proposal.
The resistance from Mr. Obama's own party -- focusing on a single element of the president's tax plans -- could foreshadow broader troubles for the rest of his proposed tax increases.
Republicans have already taken aim at rate increases planned for higher-income earners, as well as the administration's plans to raise hundreds of billions of dollars through climate-change legislation.
"We recognize there are other ways to do this," Mr. Geithner responded during a hearing Wednesday. "We are willing to listen to all ideas that meet these broad principles."Why they thought that Congress would go along with raising the deductions on such sacred cows as charitable and mortgage deductions is mystifying. Doesn't anyone down there know about politics on Capitol Hill?
So, once they get rid of these ideas that they were predicting would raise over $300 billion over the next ten years, they'll have to come up with some new ideas. Perhaps, they would prefer to outsource that planning to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as they did on the stimulus bills, the omnibus budget and are planning to do on health care reform.
5 comments:
Betsy has hit on it. In the end, this group is politically naive. That is what you get when you elect someone whose only qualifications are the ability to campaign.
It turns out Geithner should never have been confirmed, not because of his taxes, but because, like Obama, he is in well over his head.
Given a little more time, this gang will make Bush's efforts in Iraq and Katrina to be a model of great planning and execution. When this administration loses Dowd and Sullivan, the handwriting is on the wall.
Rick
We are getting hit from the front, back & sideways with higher costs. To Obama, Pelosi & Reid, it is Christmas every day. Each day they bring out new want lists. Merry Christmas!!!
Someone needs to be the adult here. All are acting like children who fail to understand limitations. This is the "gimmie" administration. Pass the kool aid! Add Barney Frank to the mixture & we are in big trouble. We have given power to this group: children & crooks. Where are the adults?
They are baffled. Obama, and the indispensable Treasury Secretary are here to save America. Isn't it selfish and unpatriotic for the Americans not to do as their savior directed them to? Who is going to be blamed if the economy gets worse? Rush Limbaugh?
Who is going to be blamed
do republicans have no other response to crises beyond finding people to blame?
Tacitus, no moreso than the liberals who have blamed Bush for eight years of everything from hangnails to Hurricane Katrina hitting NOLA and sunames.
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