The Audacity Of… What?: Obama Pushing Taxes He Fought AGAINST In Senate AND In His Book

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Daily Caller:

Part of President Barack Obama’s ambitious tax reform plan is a proposal to gut the popular 529 savings accounts used by millions of Americans to save for college. The administration has labeled the plans “inefficient” and complained that the benefit accrues too heavily towards higher-income Americans.

 

But in 2006, Obama actually voted in the U.S. Senate to make the 529 savings permanent, and has written favorably of the plans in the past.

 

The bill in question was the Pension Protection Act of 2006, which perpetuated a tax benefit that was originally created in the 2001 Bush tax cuts. The bill was overwhelmingly approved, but several Democrats did oppose it, including Senator Barbara Boxer.

 

Ryan Ellis, the tax policy director with right-leaning nonprofit Americans for Tax Reform, said it’s no surprise that Obama voted to preserve the plans back then.

 

“Presumably, he saw a lot of virtues with [529 plans],” Ellis told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “He spoke about them quite favorably in his autobiography.”

 

In “The Audacity of Hope,” while talking about the struggles of Americans to attend college, Obama praised tax-free savings accounts as a way to help control rising college costs.

 

We “still need to provide many students and parents with more direct help in meeting college expenses, whether through grants, low-interest loans, tax-free educational savings accounts, or full tax deductibility of tuition and fees,” Obama wrote in 2006. He then criticized Congress for “moving in the opposite direction” on the issue.

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Remember when Obama was against what he supports? Neither does he...