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Down in flames.

White House: Come to think of it, never mind that whole taxing 529 college savings thing



If the challenge is to come up with good policy ideas, the crew at the Obama White House are not your people. Of course, you already know that. But if the challenge is to find the most creatively hilarious rationalizations for backing down from horrible ideas, then you have to hand it to them.
  • Propose a terrible idea.
  • Watch in horror as the public hates it.
  • Cringe as your opponents who hold the majority in Congress can't wait to hold a vote on your idea so that your own party will be put on the spot fruitlessly voting in favor of it.
  • Quickly recognizing what a disaster your idea is, announce that you will now "not ask Congress to pass it" because it has "become a distraction."
Wow. The only way you get away with that is if you know the media will eat out of your hands no matter what crap you put in front of them. Oh, right, and so here we are. So explains the fate of Obama's late and unlamented idea to tax withdrawals from 529 college savings plans. Oh, 529 tax, we hardly knew ye:

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Mr. Obama wanted to tax 529 plans to finance a more targeted college subsidy program that politicians could better control. The 529 plans put the power in the hands of parents. The political problem is that 529s have become popular with, well, the middle class; there were some 11.8 million accounts and the average balance was $20,671 as of last June. House Speaker John Boehner had called on Mr. Obama to withdraw the proposal, and the Ways and Means Committee was already rolling out legislation to force Democrats to go on record for the 529 tax increase. “Given it has become such a distraction, we’re not going to ask Congress to pass the 529 provision,” a White House official told the Journal, in a classic of political rationalization.
The Journal points out that while Obama has surrendered on the 529 tax, you can be sure Democrats will come back in some way with another scheme to further tax the middle class (as if ObamaCare wasn't enough) because despite all their railing against "millionaires and billionaires," they know perfectly well that the middle class is where the money is, and they can't pay for the entitlement programs they want to lock in (and expand) forever just by soaking the hated 1 percent. This development, however, does show a promising way forward for the Republican Congress to deal with some of Obama's most trollish proposals. Schedule a vote immediately, and watch as Democrats squirm because they know everyone hates Obama's ideas and they were only proposed in the first place to pick fights. That might not work quite so well with something like free community college, where you actually have to take the time to explain that a) nothing is really "free"; and b) you're not always better off when you get out of paying for stuff you want. Then again, I'm not sure any politician - even Republicans - really understand that last point. At least they can recognize when the middle class is railing against a horrible idea proposed by their so-called champions to soak them. Keep an eye out for other Democrat schemes to lay their hands on the savings of the middle class, though. They're definitely coming.


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Dan Calabrese -- Bio and Archives

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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