State of Union address

The President will announce a tax increase on the wealthy of 320 billion over ten years and that money will be used for middle class tax cuts. The president's address -- his first to a Republican-led Congress -- will call for $320 billion in tax increases over 10 years. Aside from funding new tax credits including a tax credit for working families and expanding the child care tax credit, the White House says that money would go to funding measures to make college more afforable and accessible, including the president’s recently announced plan to make community college free for many students. Since the lowest income people pay no tax this will not help them and that represents 50% of the population. Best estimates show that 56 million families earn between $50,000 and $150,000 and this is often considered the middle class. If we take the 32 billion per year and give that to the 56 million middle class families they will each get $600. There are 70 million families who earn less than $50,000 per year and they will not get anything. This Democratic Party that was called the party of the poor is no longer that but has become the party of the middle class. Some say this happened when they found out that the poor didn’t vote. Notice that included in The President’s plan is expanding the child tax credit. This is currently at $1,000 and he plans to increase this to $3,000 and that would be a big help to the poor since this credit is paid even if no taxes are owed. The problem is that this year’s cost to the government for the child tax credit was 57 billion and if the credit is raised from $1,000 to $3,000, as The President is proposing, that will more than use up the tax increase. Now since the new tax on the wealthy will only bring in 32 billion there will be a shortfall and this does not include the plan for free community college and wipes out the middle class tax cut. My guess is that many of the people who listen to this state of the union address will believe all this is possible and I will be very surprised in any news people bother to explain how it will work. This is reminiscent of The Presidents claim for Obamacare when he said that it would insure 31 million new people and it would not cost anything and the people and the most of the press believed it.