And, one way or another, it's going to come out of the paychecks of America's working class. But the White House may be in deep denial about Obama's agenda and its legislative prospects.

"It's getting harder and harder to see how they are going to pass these sweeping overhaul bills in Congress," veteran healthcare analyst Grace-Marie Turner at the Galen Institute told me.

"The pay-fors just aren't realistic and the left is going to balk if they don't get a public plan and universal coverage. And they can't pay for that," she said.

Other tax changes are in the works that business executives say will be job killers if they are passed this year as Obama is proposing. One of them is his plan to outlaw or restrict roughly $190 billion in tax breaks that allow businesses to defer paying tax rates up to 35 percent on foreign profits invested overseas to expand markets.

"It makes U.S. jobs more expensive," Microsoft Corporation CEO Steve Ballmer told Bloomberg Financial News last month.

If Obama's anti-business initiative is enacted, Ballmer said, "We're better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S. as opposed to keeping them inside the U.S."

Politically speaking, all of this may be reaching critical mass. Obama's popular support has eroded a little in recent months, though its still high.

But support for his agenda has decidedly fallen well below his approval ratings, which means it's in for rougher sledding in the months to come.