The White House has finally rolled out its budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year. While there has been a lot about the proposed cuts to entitlement programs, President Obama’s budget unsurprisingly pushes tax hikes, including proposed changes to retirement accounts, as Politico noted last week:
The budget will also show how we can provide targeted tax relief to strengthen the economy, help middle class families and small businesses and pay for it by eliminating tax loopholes and make the tax system more fair. The budget will include a new proposal that prohibits individuals from accumulating over $3 million in IRAs and other tax-preferred retirement accounts. Under current rules, some wealthy individuals are able to accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving. The budget would limit an individual’s total balance across tax-preferred accounts to an amount sufficient to finance an annuity of not more than $205,000 per year in retirement, or about $3 million in 2013. This proposal would raise $9 billion over 10 years.
With Social Security anything but guaranteed given its unfunded liabilities, many Americans are relying on their private retirement accounts to help get them through their golden years. This is, after all, part of the American Dream. But it apparently doesn’t fit the America that President Obama has been trying so hard to re-create since taking office in 2009.
Over at the American Spectator, Ross Kaminsky explains that this is both part of President Obama’s paternalistic and class warfare schemes — it’s also blatantly hypocritical:
Who the hell is Barack Obama to tell Americans what a “reasonable” retirement income is, or how much you “need” in order to retire with a “sufficient” nest egg?The paternalism of this proposal is astounding, even for this president.And so is the hypocrisy: According to the Celebrity Net Worth website, President Obama’s net worth has jumped from $1.3 million when he took office to nearly $12 million now, largely through sales of his two books from 2007-2009. During that three-year period, his reported family income exceeded $12 million. The site also predicts that post-presidency “Barack should receive at least $10 million for the rights to his autobiography and between $500 thousand and $1 million per speaking engagement,” adding that if things go well during Obama’s second term and he is as popular after his presidency as Bill Clinton has been, “Barack Obama should be worth well over $100 million at some point in the future.”And this man is going to tell us a $205,000 income in retirement is “sufficient” and all we “need”?!?
The left has been licking their chops over private retirement accounts for years. They see it as another source of revenue that they can blow on pet programs. But at the same time, many Americans who have worked so hard to create a worry-free retirement have suddenly been put in the crosshairs of a revenue hungry administration.
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