Because that’s the Democratic Party’s one size fits all solution to all of the nation’s problems. Because they Know Better how to spend a citizen’s money than does that citizen. Here, via Fox News, is an abbreviated list of tax increases President Barack Obama wants.

• Limit deductions for top earners to 28% rate, even if income is taxed at 39.6%: $603.2 billion
• Impose a 14% one-time tax on previously untaxed foreign income: $268.1 billion
• Impose a 19% minimum tax on foreign income: $206 billion
• Modify estate and gift tax provisions: $214.4 billion
• Change the taxation of capital income: $207.9 billion
• Other increases from reform of US international tax system: $135.8 billion
• Impose a financial fee on large financial companies: $111.8 billion
• Increase tobacco taxes and index for inflation: $95.1 billion
• Repeal LIFO (Last In First Out) method of accounting for inventories: $76.1 billion
• Conform SECA (Self Employed Contributions Act) taxes for professional service businesses: $74.6 billion
• Other revenue changes and loophole closers: $47.9 billion
• Eliminate oil and natural gas preferences: $45.5 billion [Note: don’t eliminate “green” energy tax breaks and other subsidies]
• Implement the Buffett Rule by imposing a new “Fair Share Tax” (making millionaires pay at least 30% tax rate): $35.2 billion
• Reform the treatment of financial and insurance industry products: $34.4 billion
• Limit the total accrual of tax-favored retirement benefits: $26.0 billion
• Other loophole closers: $24.3 billion
• Reinstate Superfund taxes: $21.2 billion
• Tax carried interests as ordinary income: $17.7 billion
• Make unemployment insurance surtax permanent: $15.7 billion
• Eliminate coal preferences: $4.3 billion [Note: see oil and gas preferences]
• Reauthorize special assessment from domestic nuclear utilities: $2.3 billion [Note: see oil and gas preferences]
• Increase and modify Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund financing: $1.6 billion
• Repeal tax-exempt bond financing of professional sports facilities: $542.0 million

Notice that many of these tax increases are solely to raise taxes and have nothing at all to do with any real reform of our tax code or of anything else: LIFO elimination, for instance, and those financial and insurance “reforms.”

The total tax increase from these? Nearly $2.7 trillion. Think about how much that will hurt our economy by taking that much money out of it. That is, after all, 13.4% of our GDP, of our economy.