Bush wants to tax the rich and the dems say....

No? I thought that Bush is always giving a tax cut to the rich? So now when he wants to actually tax the rich the Dems say hold on a minute.

Not that I really believe Bush actually want to do this. I think that its just a ploy to show that the Dems are against any thing Bush proposes. Anything! I mean I get the feeling that if Bush says tonight that he want to start withdrawing troops immediately that the Dems would start screaming that we can't leave Iraq until the Iraqis can fight and protect their country themselves. Heh...
Bush's risky State of the Union ploy
The president's emphasis on health care addresses a vital need, but the Democrats denounce it as an unfair tax. Fortune's Nina Easton previews the upcoming battle.
FORTUNE Magazine

By Nina Easton, Fortune Washington bureau chief
January 23 2007: 10:23 AM EST

WASHINGTON (Fortune) -- Just when you thought Washington politics couldn't get any weirder: now George W. Bush wants to tax the rich.

That's right. The Republican president the Democrats accuse of playing proxy-in-chief for America's privileged elite wants to raise taxes on executives and other beneficiaries of generous, employer-provided medical insurance plans.

It's all part of a plan to reduce health care costs that he will detail in his State of the Union speech tonight. But of course the Democrats (who these days like to think they're thinking two political steps ahead of the White House - and probably are) have already devised their own name for Bush's health care proposal. "I'm going to call it 'a tax hike on the middle class'," Democratic Senate strategist James Manley tells Fortune. Ouch.

Prod all you want, but Bush administration officials studiously refuse to use the words "tax hike" at all, let alone a tax hike on the middle or upper-middle or even upper class. Bush officials prefer to call the plan a "revenue neutral" tax reform that "levels the playing field" between those who enjoy generous insurance policies from their employers and those who can't afford health insurance at all.

"There will be some winners and some losers," concedes Katherine Baicker, Harvard-trained economist and member of Bush's Council on Economic Advisers.

Under the plan, people who now buy their own insurance or sign up for basic coverage from their employers would get a tax break. But those 20 percent of employees with "more generous, deluxe, gold-plated plans," as Baicker puts it, will have to pay a tax if they "didn't change their behavior at all." That is, if they don't opt for a lower-cost insurance plan.

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