It’s tax season, again, because the Obama tax increases are looming at the start of next year—just 6 months off.  It appears that President Obama is bound and determined to tax his favorite disliked group of Americans.  In an interview with North Carolina’s WRAL TV, Obama was asked whether he would veto any bill that extended all the tax cuts. [President] Obama said,

[Y]es, and the reason is, we can’t afford it.

We can’t afford to cut spending?  How does that work, exactly?  President Obama had more to say:

We don’t need more top-down economics.  We need policies that grow and strengthen the middle class.

If he truly believes that second part, when is he going to let the 20+ jobs bills languishing in the Senate to come to a vote so they can be passed, he can sign them, and the middle class can grow be strengthened?

Then he doubled down on his demand to increase taxes.

So let me be clear to [House Republican Leader John] Boehner and everyone else: we should not hold middle class tax cuts hostage any longer[.]

In response to which I have to ask, when are you going to stop, then, holding Americans hostage to your taxing demands?  When will you cancel your tax increase and make the Bush tax cuts permanent, instead of vetoing a tax cut bill that includes all Americans and not just your preferred group?

Then Our Obama added this amazing remark:

With all the other budgetary pressures we have—with all the Republicans’ talk about wanting to shrink the deficit—they would have us borrow $700 billion over the next 10 years to give a tax cut of about $100,000 each to folks who are already millionaires[.]

Really?  What borrow (which, incidentally, the Republicans are not proposing)?  President Obama is saying he can’t find $70 billion of spending cuts in his budget each year?  Obama’s 2012 budget proposed spending $3.8 trillion in spending.  He really can’t figure out how to cut his spending proposal by less than 2%?  Hmm….

Moreover, the tax bill he has said he’ll sign–extending the Bush tax cuts exclusively for his favored Americans–is only a temporary extension.  He won’t even allow that to be permanent.  This despite the fact that the continued uncertainty can have no favorable effect on our economy as individuals and businesses continue to husband their resources against that continued uncertainty.

Oh, yeah: President Obama also is imposing a penaltytax increase of some $285 per year, for not buying Obamacare’s health insurance starting in just 18 months.  And this rises to $2100 per year in 2016.  And those are floors: households that make more than $28,500 per year (or rather less than those $250 thousand Obama “promised”) in those 18 months will have to pay 1% of their income as that penaltytax, and beginning in 2016, households that make more than $83,400 per year (still way less than those $250 thousand Obama “promised”) will have to pay 2.5% of their income as that penaltytax.