Since the 1990s, the folks at Gallup, each April 15 (U.S. Income Tax Day), have been asking Americans if they regard their taxes as fair. The poll indicates taxpayers are the most frustrated since 2001.
And that was before they saw President Obama’s proposed 2014 federal budget, finally delivered to Congress last week. It was loaded with new taxes – not just for high earners, but for the middle class as well.
If Americans had a chance to digest all the new taxes the president plans to impose on them, the number of disgruntled taxpayers would have certainly ballooned way past 45%.
Even a headline in the usually liberal Atlantic magazine noted: “Obama's Budget Would Lead to the Highest Federal Tax Rate in 4 Decades.”
However, that doesn’t bother The Atlantic much because the leftwing Tax Policy Center was pleased to find that Obama's budget would hit wealthy families hardest, with the top 20% of income earners suffering almost 90% of the suggested tax hikes. These are the same folks just hit by new and higher income taxes in Obama’s New Year’s Eve sequester tax deal.
While the conservative Investor's Business Daily exposed the President’s 2012 campaign hypocrisy about his beloved middle class. The IBD headline reads: “Obama Budget Shows Middle-Class Tax Pledge Was Fraud.”
That’s because the same Tax Policy Center admits that American families at every income level would end up paying more if Obama's budget were enacted, including those making less than $10,000 a year – so much for that sought after campaign prize, the American Middle Class.
And if you believed Candidate Obama when he promised to cut the size of government, you should know his 2014 budget adds 6,180 new employees to an already bloated civilian workforce off 2.1 million.
As Ronald Reagan used to say, thank goodness, we don’t get everything we pay for!
Now, each year when the Budget of the United States Government for the Fiscal Year is submitted, along with the Budget Message of the President, the news media makes a big deal of it. For example, President Obama’s budget consists of four massive documents, the first of which is a list of summaries, a 244 page convoluted mess.
I can tell you as a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, I never read the entire budget, but my staff combed through every number that affected my First District of Maryland – which involved virtually every department of government.
The devil is in the details and in this budget President Obama is doing what he warned he would in a speech way back on October 29, 2011, when he told the Republican House: “If Congress won't act, I will.”
I have repeatedly warned about Obama’s plans to nationalize private retirement and pension plans.
Well, his 2014 Budget moves closer by damaging such plans. This budget suggests the need for limits on contributions to retirement plans. Obama has decided that an IRA or 401(k) that provides pensions of more than $205,000 a year is too high.
Obama’s budget would apply new penalties to money in a plan exceeding what he calls a “maximum permitted accumulation.” This reduces any benefit from compounding. His suggested limit on such savings would be $3 million. And what will be the limits set on other, lower accounts in the future, if Obama has his way?
This is yet another example of Obama trying to circumvent the U.S. Congress. Fortunately, the House of Representatives remains in Republican, if not at times, conservative control. One can only hope that means Obama's sneak attacks on private property will be exposed and repelled.
But you need to do your part to protect yourself as well.
As I advised last week, one way to protect your IRA or other retirement plans is to move your plan out of the jurisdiction of the United States; to locate your retirement assets and their management offshore, or start a new plan offshore.
You may think that’s difficult. It’s not. If you wish to protect yourself and your retirement from a tyrannical government, there are available plans that allow you to move your assets and money offshore to safer places with the highest yields available and they can be self-managed. We can tell you how and where.
Faithfully yours,
Bob Bauman, JD
Chairman, Freedom Alliance
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