This coming, just days after a speech where Obama was promising a pay-as-you-go strategy and promised to cut the deficit, he unveiled a $3.55 trillion budget plan for 2010 as well as changes that would push 2009 spending to $3.94 trillion. Almost half of next year’s budget would be money he doesn’t have.
The budget not only includes massive spending increases, but also raises taxes on charitable contributions for the wealthy.
…taxpayers in the current top tax bracket of 35 percent would see their tax deduction for every $1 given to charity drop from 35 cents to 28 cents.
Increasing tax rates on the wealthiest tax payers may be an acceptable way of raising revenue, but discouraging them from contributing to charities doesn’t seem like a great strategy in these troubled economic times. We may all be standing in soup lines before too long…