The $4 trillion budget President Barack Obama sent Congress on Monday is his blueprint for reviving “middle class opportunity.” Liberals are thrilled by the redistributive thrust of the president’s budgetit would hit affluent Americans with a battery of new tax hikes, totaling $2 trillion over the next decade, and use the proceeds to finance substantial tax cuts for low and middle income families.
However, this has, of course, scandalized tax-averse congressional Republicans, who echo House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan in denouncing the Obama budget as an exercise in “envy economics.”
Given the partisan stalemate in Washington, many pundits therefore view the White House budget as a purely political statement intended to frame the 2016 presidential debate. Next, the GOP Congress will produce a conservative alternative, and each side will spend the next two years accusing the other of waging class warfare.
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