Dems Playing "Chicken" With Taxpayers

From the Washington Post:

"After 18 months of runaway spending, bailouts and takeovers, Washington Democrats are poised to allow the largest tax increase in American history to take effect next year," Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.), a member of the GOP leadership, said Saturday in the party's weekly radio address. "House Republicans will oppose this tax increase with everything we've got."

The Democrats are more interested in playing the class warfare card in the upcoming elections than doing their jobs.

This blows a hole in their argument that they're deficit hawks. They're not deficit hawks; they're deficit chickens," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is tasked with defending the party's House majority.

Political posturing aside, the difference between extending all the Bush tax cuts and just those the Dems claim apply to the "middle class" is $600 billion over ten years. This is hardly chump change, but when Democrats are running up a deficit of $1.47 trillion this year alone they can hardly sell themselves as competent stewards of our nation.

Besides, lost in the dems demogogic rhetoric is the fact that many of the "rich" they are planning to soak are small business owners:

Republicans say the tax cuts are critical to bolstering a feeble economic recovery. And with unemployment at 9.5 percent, even some Democrats are queasy about raising taxes on high earners -- a category that includes many small-business owners -- when policymakers are trying to encourage them to create jobs.

When the Democrat who chairs the Senate budget committee, Conrad (D-ND) isn't drinking the class warrior Kool-Aid, President Obama has a messaging problem.

When you add the Democrats willingness to see taxes rise and their promise to address the recommendations of the president's deficit commission in a lame duck session taxpayers are about to be hit with a one-two punch:

Obama debt commission member, Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, launched a scary trial balloon on ABC News. Gregg suggested the debt commission will likely recommend a massive $26.7 trillion tax increase.

Mandate = Tax increase

President Obama should actually read the legislation before he goes on his next t.v. blitz to promote it. The legislation is very explicit that the individual is mandated to purchase health insurance or they will pay an excise tax to the federal government. From Politico:
"In the most contentious exchange of President Barack Obama’s marathon of five Sunday shows, he said it is “not true” that a requirement for individuals to get health insurance under a key reform plan now being debated amounts to a tax increase.
But he could look it up — in the bill.
Page 29, sentence one of the bill introduced by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont) says: “The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax.”
And the rest of the bill is clear that the Finance Committee does, in fact, consider it a tax: “The excise tax would be assessed through the tax code and applied as an additional amount of Federal tax owed.”
The bill requires every American, with few exceptions, to carry health insurance. To enforce this individual mandate, the Senate Finance Committee created the excise tax as a penalty for people who don’t have insurance – and it can run as much as $3,800 a year per family.". Seems like a very large tax increase on average Americans to me.

The president should level with the people about the costs of nationalizing health care. Including that when this legislation costs much more than advertised, the first things to go will be the subsidies. President Obama will tell you not to worry about the individual mandate because the government is going to pay for your healthcare. The truth is that when the dust clears, many Americans will be staring at the prospect of being forced to buy health insurance they can't afford or paying a fine, up to $3,800, to the government and still not have medical coverage.

Either the president is clueless about what is in the bill or he is lying through his teeth. Neither prospect inspires confidence in his leadership.