February 2, 2015
The big question of Barack Obama‘s budget is: Can we address income inequality and the middle-class squeeze with tax policies and government programs? History suggests it is possible. Tip O’Neill often talked about the expansion of the middle class through Franklin Roosevelt‘s initiatives–including the creation of Social Security, minimum-wage and maximum-hour laws, and progressive tax policies–and how befuddled he was that the same middle-class voters who owed their financial stability to Democratic policies supported Ronald Reagan policies that benefited the wealthy. Now, President Obama is following the Roosevelt model with proposals for middle-class tax cuts, raising taxes on the wealthy, free community-college tuition, and an infrastructure spending program to create jobs that is not all that dissimilar from the Works Progress Administration of the Roosevelt era. The danger, though, is that the Republican-controlled Congress will go for the dessert and skip the vegetables–approving the tax cuts and credits and much of the spending in the Obama plan but opposing his tax increases.Please click here to read the full article.
