I won’t have a real handle on the Obama budget for several days at best, but what I do understand about it at this point impresses me. I am pleased that it will increase revenue, by rising the rate on and closing loopholes that benefit the 1%. I have no problem with his intent to reduce the nominal corporate tax rate, because the loopholes it closes and corporate giveaways it ends actually raise the effective tax rate for the large corporations, that have evaded paying their fair share, while lowering them for small companies. I like the investments in infrastructure, job training, and technology development. I especially like that the cuts to Medicare spending come exclusively through reducing Drug company profits.

In the last annual budget of his term, President Obama for the first time projects a deficit below $1 trillion and foresees the federal shortfall declining to sustainable levels by 2017. To help reduce deficits and offset the costs of his proposed spending on job-creation initiatives for infrastructure, job-training and innovation, Mr. Obama uses his budget for fiscal year 2013 to call for raising $1.5 trillion over 10 years from the wealthiest taxpayers and from closing some corporate tax breaks, chiefly for oil and gas companies. For the first time he proposes a higher tax on dividend income of the wealthiest taxpayers, which would raise about $206 billion over 10 years. The budget proposal leaves him short of his goal to cut the deficit in half by 2013. Later this month, the administration will propose an overhaul of the corporate tax code to root out many tax breaks and lower the 35 percent rate, but Mr. Obama is proposing that the change would not raise any more revenues than the current system, despite the nation’s chronic deficits…

Inserted from <NY Times>

Ed Schultz covered this story with Bernie Sanders.

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As usual Bernie is spot-on.

The best analysis I have encountered so far comes from Ezra Klein and Peter Orzag, who compared the Obama and the Romney budgets.

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