Obama's Budget to Nowhere

Barack Obama's latest and last budget is nothing if not is a grandiose visionary document. No one - least of all Congress - paid much attention to it, because no one cares where this lamest of duck presidents wants the country to go fiscally. After $8 trillion of new debt added, he's done enough trouble to our nation's finances already.

But the $4.1 trillion Obama manifesto deserves some inspection if only because it is crammed with so many awful ‎ideas. Americans should be very clear about what the progressive left wants to do next if they retain power in the November elections and Obama has proudly shown his hand.

I should say at the outset that Republicans have been no fiscal bargain themselves. In two years the GOP has worked with Obama to ram through budget caps by some $150 billion above levels promised in earlier budget agreements. The maddening spending spree, alas, has been bipartisan.

But Obama and the liberal left see this spree as just the beginning. This 2017 budget would spend $4 trillion for the first time ever, and then outlays hit $5 trillion four years after that. And then we head to $6 trillion in the next four years. Mercifully, they don't publish the numbers after that, but one half expects Buzz Lightyear to appear and joyously shout out: to infinity and beyond.

The trillions of bigger government would be pipelined to such "critical investments" as green energy solar and wind programs, education, job training, climate change research, mass transit, high-speed rail, self-driving cars, Medicaid funding for Puerto Rico, Obamavare funding and other goodies that would be gobbled up by the greens, the unions, the welfare industry, and the Washington spending lobby

Almost laughably, Obama touts this smorgasbord feast as "fiscally responsible." It all sounds like an instant replay of the failed 2009 stimulus program with its hollow promise of shovel ready jobs.

What is more amazing is the catalog of new taxes Obama wants to beat down the economy with to pay for the fiscal jail break. The budget calls for $2.8 trillion of new taxes and fees over the next decade. These taxes are almost all aimed at rich people, businesses, banks, investors, oil companies, and other such sinister groups that actually produce things in America.

Start with the $10 per barrel of oil tax. This equates to about 20 to 25 cents more per gallon consumers will pay at the pump. Amazing, Obama was just bragging about $2 a gallon gasoline in his State of the Union message. This also comes at a time when the oil and gas industry is pretty much flat on its back. Twelve major oil companies are expecting losses in 2016 with Chesapeake near bankruptcy. Now Obama wants to put a new tax on them? Insane.

Then there is the capital gains tax. When Obama came into office the tax was 15 percent then he raised it to 20 percent then he raised it again to 23.8 percent (as part of Obamacare) and now he wants 28 percent. That's a more than 90 percent increase in the tax from the Bush years.

This dunderheaded idea will only lower business investment at a time when the 4th quarter GDP report showed business investment flat and for some industries, negative. How are we going to get more jobs if businesses don't build more plants or purchase more equipment? Try getting a trucking job if the company doesn't have a truck.

Next he wants to limit deductions to 28 percent for high income earners in the 35 and 40 percent tax brakets. So first they raise the tax rates and fill the code with giveaways, and then they want to limit the write-offs for these very deductions. Why not just go with the flat tax and eliminate ALL deductions and credits while lowering not raising tax rates.

There is also a $110 billion bank tax for financial institutions that get too large and profitable. So Washington bails out the banks if they are failing but then taxes them if they get too successful. If Obama wants to stop bank consolidation, he should work to repeal the Dodd-Frank bill which has encouraged record bank mergers.

Obama also would enforce a new minimum tax on millionaires of 30 percent. This is the mythical Buffett rule, named after Warren Buffett, who several years ago declared he was paying less tax than his secretary.  Since people like Buffett get most of their income from capital gains (most of which are already taxed as corporate income)‎, this would raise the cap gains rate yet again to 30 percent - double the rate when Obama entered office. We already have the highest corporate tax, now he wants America to have the highest capital gains tax on top of that.

Then he wants new taxes on 401k retirement plans and Roth IRA disbursements. I have always said that putting after-tax dollars into IRA retirement plans was a sucker's bet, because the politicians would simply tax the money again when you start taking it out. And that's what is starting to happen.

The White House would also raise the estate tax - and nearly triple the number of middle class  estates that must pay the tax. The bipartisan deal on estate taxation a few years ago - a 40 percent r‎ate and a $5 million exemption indexed for inflation. Obama wants to raise the death tax to 45 percent and provide only a miniscule $1 million exemption (which is about the value of an upper middle class home in some high-priced areas) and he wouldn't index that for inflation. So those who want to leave their life savings - already taxed when it was earned - to their kids and grandkids would have the government take half of it first.

There are more extractions but the point is that it used to be that liberals like Michael Dukakis said that they would only raise taxes "as a last resort." Now it is the first resort and their politics of envy has morphed them into tax and spend cartoon characters. Raising tax rates as high as possible is now a badge of honor, and Hillary is in a political life and death struggle to keep up with Bernie Sanders.

The rich will pay for it all, Sanders pledged to his adoring fans on victory night in New Hampshire. All that was missing was the Howard Dean primal scream of 2004.

What a sad and even pitiful party the Democrats have become. They are on a crusade to tear down the productive and innovative classes in America in the pursuit of economic justice. It's like a scene out of the riotous streets of Gotham in the last Batman movie. Instead of a growth agenda that strives to make all of America look like Beverly Hills, they won't stop with the class warfare until all of America looks like Detroit.

*Stephen Moore is a Fox News contributor and an economics consultant with Freedom Works.