By snoadmin
President Barack Obama unveiled his final federal budget before his reelection campaign and to no surprise it was met with both supporters and critics. The new budget is heavily built towards fulfilling left-wing priorities, but also prolongs reducing our nation’s debt.
The budget calls for a $350 billion stimulus to keep payroll taxes roughly the same, create more jobs within our country, strengthen our education and rebuild some of our crumbling infrastructure. To combat the extra spending, a small cut will be made to federally funded health care; however most will come from taxing the wealthy.
In Obama’s new budget, taxes on the rich and corporations will be raised to $2 trillion over the next decade. Obama is also pushing for lawmakers to rewrite our tax code so millionaires would have to pay 30 percent of their yearly income in taxes to the Internal Revenue Service. Also, Obama wants to eliminate the alternative minimum tax, which affects the middle-class.
It’s apparent that Obama is very concerned with the middle-class, as he should be. The middle-class is the foundation to our nation and as we move towards the end of the recession the affects are still lingering today.
However, in order for the middle-class to recover, they need tax relief and jobs. This takes up a big chunk of federal spending, which will be made up by taxing the wealthy.
However, it is still impossible to make enough cuts to reduce our national debt. Thus, the situation becomes a question of whether rebuilding the middle-class is more of a priority than paying off our debt.
But, Obama believes that sitting on our debt for a few years is not a problem. Obama said in a message to Congress, “reining in our deficits is not an end in itself.”
Even though our spending over the next couple of years will not reduce the deficit, as long as it goes towards building a foundation for the economy and creating jobs, it is necessary. The right-wing “you make it on your own” view on economics has widened the gap between the wealthy and the poor. If our country can refill that gap with a stronger middle-class then we can turn our focus towards fixing the deficit.
One thing the new budget neglects to change is Social Security. In the future Social Security will become the major source of U.S. borrowing. Especially with the baby-boomers beginning to retire, a major amount of our budget will go towards their Social Security checks. What we pay towards Social Security in the future will weigh down us soon-to-be graduates in our first jobs.
Obama’s new budget has its flaws but its main goal is to rejuvenate our economy first. It is also easy to see that Obama is aiming to please when it comes to his reelection this year. By keeping the hope of recovery alive for the middle-class and putting off addressing the Social Security debacle, Obama will keep many in his camp. However, Obama cannot expect more than money from the wealthy.
