How Much Does President Obama’s Budget Redistribute Income?
The Tax Foundation finds that if the new budget’s policies are enacted during FY 2012, the amount redistributed from the top-earning one percent of U.S. families will increase by $64,000 per family up to a total of $432,000 per family. That is up from $368,000 per family, the redistribution that would prevail in 2012 even if none of President Barack Obama’s major new initiatives were enacted. The upper-income families in the 95th through the 99th percentile of earners will lose only slightly more of their income. The large swath of so-called upper-middle-income families, those in the 60th through the 95th percentiles, will continue to have their income redistributed to other families lower on the income spectrum, but Obama’s policies will actually decrease the amount they lose. The report concludes that Obama’s proposed budget lives up to his campaign promise to collect more tax revenue from high-income people and redistribute it down the income spectrum. Read the report.
