The House bill, expected to be formally unveiled as soon as Monday, is likely to cost $1 trillion overall. About half the cost of the bill will come from budget savings from ratcheting down payments that health-care providers receive through programs like Medicare, which covers the elderly. The balance will come from revenues generated by a graduated surtax that would begin in 2011, said New York Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.
Upper-income families currently face a top income-tax rate of 35%, though that is scheduled to rise to 39.6% in 2011. Under the Rangel plan, married couples making $350,000 would also be subject to a 1% surtax to cover the health plan. The levy would rise to 2% for those making above $500,000 and 3% for those with incomes of $1 million or more. Around 1% of U.S. households filing tax returns make more than $350,000, according to the Internal Revenue Service.
Congressional aides said the surtax rates would go higher as soon as 2013-to 2%, 3% and about 5% for each of the three levels. They added, though, that the higher rates might not kick in if other ways to pay for the health plan were found by then.
(It isn’t me calling Charlie Rangel ethically-challenged, by the way. It is CREW.)
Many of the “rich” are people who run small businesses as “S” corporations, meaning their business incomes pass through and are taxed as personal income. Here’s a prediction: The number of “S” corporations is about to drop and the number of people earning “rich” incomes is going to crater.
And the revenue predictions for this tax hike will be laughable almost instantly.
Meaning other tax hikes will be coming very, very soon. Those will target the newly reclassified “rich” – who will be further down the economic chain and captive in jobs that pay decently, but not really all that well.
Call it going Galt or call it good business sense. Most of the “rich” that are such popular targets of the demagogues right now are about to disappear.
As are most of the jobs those “rich” create.
Folks like Rangel have given up on kneecapping the American economy and are going right for the head shot.
There will not be ”no rich no more”.
Nor jobs.
And soon we will all be equal…except for those calling the shots. Which reminds me of the revised Golden Rule:
“They who has the gold makes the rules.”
In Barack Obama’s world this is not a bug it’s a feature. Small business owners are well, small, and numerous. Reflecting a diverse range of interests they are a total pain to deal with, and have the nasty tendency to wallow in their independence. This makes them feisty and – gasp – remarkably anti-statist.
Better to wipe them off the map. Then all that will be left are the big corporations. The Wal-Marts and GE’s of the world. Notice how compliant they’ve become on healthcare or our ‘green’ future? Major hospital chains are promising to cough up billions in order to give Obama a financial fig leaf, and pretty soon more corporate types will be lining up to pass healthcare on to government and get back to securing their market position.
It’s so much easier for the White house to sit own with a dozen or two industry captains. Obama wants it, and they want it too.
This is exactly what the Obamessiah meant when he told Joe the Plumber he wanted to ‘spread the wealth around’ and when he said he wanted to ‘level the playing field’ – he wants to make all Americans equally poverty stricken with an equally lower standard of living.