Rangel: Tax the Rich!

No surprise, tax the rich until the revenues don't come in and then we all pay. Rangel has been offering up health care nonsense for a couple weeks now and has been adamantly opposes to taxing employee benefits to protect the health care plans of the Unions and has essentially declaring the idea dead on a arrival.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Key House Democrats decided Friday to raise taxes on the wealthy to help pay for health care legislation, capping an up-and-down week for President Barack Obama's top domestic priority. At the same time, Democratic leaders tried to quell concerns among moderate and conservative lawmakers about other elements of the bill.

''We're closer to that significant reform than at any time in recent history. That doesn't make it easy. It's hard,'' Obama said while traveling overseas.

Democrats on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee agreed to a new surtax that would start with households making $350,000 a year and begin in 2011, said the committee's chairman, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.

It would raise some $540 billion over 10 years, about half the cost of Obama's ambitious plan to reshape the nation's health care system and provide care to the 50 million uninsured. However, lawmakers could not provide an exact price tag of the overall bill.

The proposal faces an uncertain reception in the Senate and from moderate and conservative Democrats in the House, who rebelled Thursday over various aspects -- including costs -- of the plan.

No price tag, how about a trillion. Anyway taxing the rich won't provide the needed revenues, but it will provide needed political cover sparing the President from taxing employee benefits. Of course this dooms any chance of bi-partisan reform and they it means they will be raising taxes in a recession, something Obama explicitly denies he would do. By the way, how many small businesses are considered wealthy? Between an employer mandate for health coverage with an additional tax if your business doesn't provide a plan, these guys are going to get slammed further worsening the economy and leading to further job losses. Well the GOP has al ready attacked the proposal and the Senate Democrats will likely question the move:

Republicans, who have pummeled the Democrats over the $787 billion economic stimulus, pounced at word of the proposed tax increase, which they said would primarily hurt small-business owners.

“In the middle of a serious recession, with unemployment nearing double digits, the last thing we need is a tax increase on small businesses, which will cost the American economy even more jobs,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio.

The Senate health committee had hoped to approve its version of the health care legislation this week, but now expects to do that early next week. And Mr. Rangel and other House leaders had first said they would announce their plan to pay for the legislation on Thursday, only to be slowed by an array of disagreements.

By the way he tucked this nugget into the bill:

Mr. Rangel’s committee is also planning to insert language that would raise the surtax in 2013 if expected cost savings in the health care system do not materialize.

There will be limited cost savings and certain cost increases as the Massachusetts model has clearly shown.. The president and the Democrats has been lying about the amount of money electronic records and preventive care can reduce costs so this all but guarantees further tax increases.