Obama's New Budget Mixed

Obama's New Buget is a mixed grab bag of some good some bad. It's going to be portrayed as breaking the bank and raising spending. Actually it's tricky. Spending will go up.That has to be. It wont go up as much as it would without the cuts. He's leaving in things to help people who can't cope, to stimulate employment, tax incentives to business.

President Barack Obama has unveiled a multi trillion-dollar budget focused on creating jobs and reducing the nation’s high unemployment rate. The job focused budget would boost the deficit to a record-breaking $1.56 trillion, an increase of 5.7 percent for the current budget. It is also forecast that spending would rise another 3 percent in 2011 to $3.83 trillion. Much of the spending surge started in 2008 and reflects the cost of massive economic stimulus measures passed by Congress to deal with the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. The surge in the deficits reflects not only the increased spending but also a big drop in tax revenues, reflecting the 7.2 million people who have lost jobs since the recession began and weaker corporate tax receipts.

Here are the key financial aspects of the proposed 2011 Budget.

- Extending tax cuts for businesses, including a $5,000 tax credit for hiring new workers this year, help for the unemployed and $25 billion more for cash-strapped state governments.

- Extension of the popular Making Work Pay middle-class tax breaks of $400 per individual and $800 per couple through 2011. They were due to expire after this year. The budget also proposes making $250 payments to Social Security recipients to bolster their finances in a year when they are not receiving the normal cost-of-living boost to their benefit checks because of low inflation.

- The budget assumes enactment of a comprehensive health care program, the issue that dominated the president’s first year in office. Passage of that proposal is currently stalled with Democrats trying to figure out how to cope with the loss of a key Democratic seat that gave them the 60 votes they needed to overcome a Republican filibuster.

- Federal support for elementary and high school education would get what the administration termed the biggest increase in history. The Pell Grant college tuition program which would see an increase of $17 billion to just under $35 billion, helping an additional 1 million students.

- A boost in taxes on the wealthiest Americans, families making more than $250,000 annually, by allowing the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 to expire. The provision also aims to reduce the rate at which these same households write-off itemized deductions.

boost taxes on the wealthiest, that's a campaign promise and one he's keeping, that's great. He doesn't cut Social Security or SSI but opts for the needed make for for the lack of cost of living adjustment.

O he's a commie, head for the hills! If only he was.