[Wash Times] Escalating his battle with congressional Republicans, President Obama will propose $320 billion in higher taxes in his State of the Union address, mostly by raising the rate on capital gains and closing tax loopholes for wealthier families, senior administration officials said Saturday.
Mr. Obama also will call on lawmakers to impose a new fee on big banks with more than $50 billion in assets to discourage risky financial investments, a holdover from the Wall Street crisis that is sure to appeal to the presidentÂ’s liberal base.
The money raised would pay for a variety of the president’s domestic-spending proposals for the middle class, including an initiative for the taxpayergovernment to pay all tuition for community-college studentsstaff salaries. A senior administration official said Mr. Obama intends to make a forceful case in his speech that the economy has recovered from the recession, and he wants “to make sure this prosperity is shared by the middle class.”
Champ knows this will go nowhere in the Congress, but it will provide him a petulance booster shot and an opportunity to blame "greedy republicans."
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