Obama Wants To Determine What Is Or Is Not 'Reasonable' Levels For Retirement Savings

By Susan Duclos

(Obama's 244-page, $3.78 trillion tax and spend "budget" plan is embedded here and the list of  top ten taxes within that proposal is here.)

Quick flashback to 2010 when Barack Obama stated " We’re not, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money." (Audio at YouTube)

We see the same type of thinking, the same arrogance, in Obama's belief that he should be able to determine what is enough, in his latest budget proposal, second bullet point of his plan to rebalance the tax code, titled "Prohibit Individuals from Accumulating Over $3 Million in Tax-Preferred Retirement Accounts."

“Individual Retirement Accounts and other tax-preferred savings vehicles are intended to help middle class families save for retirement,” says the Obama’s budget—which does not define exactly what a “middle class family” is, nor explain why someone who does not have a family is not intended to be helped by these type of accounts.

“But under current rules, some wealthy individuals are able to accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving,” the budget continues, without explaining who exactly a “wealthy individual” would be, or how a “wealthy individual” would differs from a “wealthy family.”

“The Budget would limit an individual’s total balance across tax-preferred accounts to an amount sufficient to finance an annuity of not more than $205,000 per year in retirement, or about $3 million for someone retiring in 2013,” says the budget.

Reasonable? By what right does Obama think he is entitled to determine what is or is not reasonable for Americans to save up from their earnings, their investments, made over their lifetimes?

What has happened to the American Dream, where people come from around the world to America because of the ideal of freedom  and opportunity for prosperity and success achieved by hard work?

This is nothing more than Obama's class warfare rhetoric, his ideology of redistribution of wealth from those who have earned it to provide more government spending for those that have not earned it.

If this portion of Obama's plan is enacted, it will take $9 billion away from American savers over the next ten years.