Obama's Insidious War on the Middle Class

The first power grab hitting the middle class is Obama's pride and joy, the cap and trade bill. Obama claims that this bill will create "green jobs." In reality, this bill will kill an estimated 2 million private-sector jobs a year as it clamps down on the manufacturing sector and forces companies to relocate to countries without the draconian caps on emissions. Besides destroying jobs, this bill hurts middle-class Americans directly by raising their utility rates and gas prices.

The 1,400-page cap and trade bill also includes provisions demanding that buildings be retrofitted to increase energy efficiency. Middle-class homeowners will be forced to make costly improvements before they can sell their homes. Making homes more expensive and the process of selling your home more arduous could cause foreclosures to skyrocket further.

The Obama administration's massive government universal healthcare plan will also scorch the middle class. To pay for his costly plan, Obama will tax those who have insurance (including those making less than $250,000) and "spread the wealth around." Research shows most middle-class families are overwhelmingly happy with their insurance plans, but Obama's program will drive businesses to the new taxpayer-subsidized plan that will be cheaper. Employers will have an incentive to dump people onto the government plan, which will cost taxpayers, and the quality of private insurance will suffer.

Obama and his staff are fundamentally altering the role of government in our country. They forget how our country was able to achieve a previously unattained level of prosperity. It was not government programs, bureaucracies, and regulations that allowed America to succeed. It was a free-market system that rewarded hard work. Our country historically has been governed by leaders who did not interfere with and obstruct entrepreneurs seeking to innovate.

Obama is moving away from the free-enterprise economy that provided the middle class with jobs and unprecedented buying power. Obama and an army of White House Czars don't create prosperity -- they just eat it up. Future taxpayers are going to have to pay for all these programs and deficits, and the middle class will end up shouldering the load, while Obama is enjoying his gold-plated government retirement.