The Robin Hood Budget

Dan Froomkin
WashPost

President Obama today unveiled a fiscal year 2010 budget proposal that is dazzling both in the scale of its ambitions and its deficits. It is also the most detailed blueprint yet for the profound course-change that Obama promised in his campaign.

White House budget director Peter Orszag describes the budget proposal to reporters this morning. (Bill O'Leary/Post)

"You know, there are times where you can afford to redecorate your house and there are times where you need to focus on rebuilding its foundation," Obama said this morning "Today, we have to focus on foundations."

What he didn't mention was that he was also ripping out some of the foundations that were laid by the previous administration.

Obama's budget would dramatically increase taxes on the wealthy, while cutting payments and subsidies to insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, agribusiness and defense contractors -- and mandating a system to charge polluters for their carbon emissions.

It would, in short, reverse the redistribution of wealth that took place during the Bush era. This time, the rich will be subsidizing the poor, not the other way around.

(More here.)