Rhetoric vs. Reality: The Budget and the Campaign Promises

[firedupdem]

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“It’s very consistent with the broad themes of his campaign,” said William G. Gale, director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution, noting that the budget could make the income tax code more progressive than it was during the Clinton administration.

The fiscal 2010 plan would create a permanent tax credit for workers worth about $800, establish a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and launch a large-scale expansion of health coverage funded in part by higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

Obama is trying to back up his appeals for working class voters by eliminating provisions in the tax code that allow corporations to shelter some of their income abroad and that tax financial managers’ compensation at 15 percent instead of the higher ordinary income tax rates. He also would scrap an inventory accounting technique known as “last-in, first-out” that benefits the oil and gas industry and other big manufacturers.

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The budget does propose injecting more competition into the Medicare Advantage program — a Republican-championed initiative that allows private managed-care plans to provide benefits to seniors in place of the government and that Obama frequently criticized as wasteful during the campaign.

It would require private insurance companies to bid against each other to provide Medicare benefits as opposed to the current system which reimburses them based on the costs of care in service areas. The competitive bidding would save $175 billion over 10 years, the administration said.

**Worth the read

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000003062743&cpage=2