Obama proposes $4T budget with tax hikes on the wealthy - Thehill

President Obama on Monday called for an end to “mindless austerity” as he presented the Republican Congress with a $4 trillion budget proposal that would shatter the budget caps under sequestration.

Bolstered by the growing economy, the president declared that the deficit focus of the past should be discarded in favor of “investments” in infrastructure and education, funded partly by tax hikes on the wealthy and big business.

“Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well? Or are we going to build an economy where everyone who works hard has a chance to get ahead?” Obama said Monday at the Department of Homeland Security following the budget’s unveiling. 

He described his proposals as “middle-class economics” in which “everybody gets a fair shot, and everybody is doing their fair share, and everybody plays by the same set of rules.

The fiscal blueprint — the second-to-last of Obama’s presidency and the first he’s pitched to a GOP-controlled Congress — sets the stage for a high-stakes battle, with Republicans determined to use their new majorities in the House and Senate to slash domestic spending and bring the budget in balance within 10 years.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Obama had broken his promise to present a budget with “practical, not partisan” ideas.

“Unfortunately, what we saw this morning was another top-down, backward-looking document that caters to powerful political bosses on the left and never balances — ever,” McConnell said. 

Republicans shot down much of Obama’s plan, including proposals to breach spending ceilings by $74 billion and raise $320 billion in revenue by taxing the rich and large financial companies.

“It may be Groundhog Day, but the American people can’t afford a repeat of the same old top-down policies of the past,” Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said.

Administration officials touted their tax plan as a winner for the middle class, arguing it would give more than 44 million households an average benefit of $600. The budget’s proposed tax breaks include a $3,000 child care tax credit, a college tax credit of $2,500, a second-earner tax credit of $500 and an expanded earned income tax credit for workers without children and non-custodial parents.

Another cornerstone of the proposal is a $478 billion infrastructure program that would be funded through a tax on corporate earnings. The United States would tax the offshore earnings of U.S. companies at a 14 percent tax rate, generating an estimated $238 billion in revenue for the government.  Read More at Obama proposes $4T budget

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