As the U.S. economy continues its slow but steady march into economic depression, the Obama obsession with taxing millionaires and billionaires continues.  Consider, Obama Tax Plan Would Ask More of Millonaires.

President Obama on Monday will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their earnings as middle-income taxpayers, according to administration officials.

With a special joint Congressional committee starting work to reach a bipartisan budget deal by late November, the proposal adds a new and populist feature to Mr. Obama’s effort to raise the political pressure on Republicans to agree to higher revenues from the wealthy in return for Democrats’ support of future cuts from Medicaid.

Mr. Obama’s proposal is certain to draw opposition from Republicans, who have staunchly opposed raising taxes on the affluent because, they say, it would discourage investment. It could also invite scrutiny from some economists who have disputed Mr. Buffett’s assertion that the megarich pay a lower tax rate over all, because many in that group actually make more from wages than from investments.

In a speech on Thursday, Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, agreed with Mr. Obama that the deficit-reduction committee “can tackle tax reform, and it should,” to get rid of many tax breaks and allow for lower marginal rates.  “Tax increases, however, are not a viable option for the joint committee,” Mr. Boehner said. Instead, he emphasized that meeting the deficit-reduction target should come largely from overhauling benefit programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

The Obama proposal has little chance of becoming law unless Republican lawmakers bend. But by focusing on the wealthiest Americans, the president is sharpening the contrast between Republicans and Democrats with a theme he can carry into his bid for re-election in 2012.

Does the latest Obama tax proposal have merit or is it simply an attempt to capture votes based on a class warfare strategy?  Half of all American households already pay zero income tax and the top 5% of Americans by income already pay 60% of all income taxes.   As pointed out by the Wall Street Journal, there is No Easy Answer On Tax Issue.

“We’re approaching nearly half of the United States population that doesn’t pay any income taxes,” Mr. Perry said in Iowa, when asked about combating an “entitlement culture” in the U.S. “And I think one of the ways is to let everybody, as many people as possible…be able to be helping pay for the government that we have in this country.” In Nashua, N.H., Mr. Romney hit a similar theme: “We want to make sure people do pay their fair share.”

Of the poorest 20% of American households, those earning less than $16,812 a year, 93.4% pay no income tax. But even 30% of the middle class earning between $33,542 and $59,386 are exempt. Some Republican economists say the tax policies that cause this phenomenon have gone too far, contending that people who don’t pay income taxes have an incentive to support politicians who promise more federal programs, since they aren’t paying for them.

Moreover, they argue the tax code has become too dependent on too few people. Sixty percent of the income tax is paid by 5% of U.S. households, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director who led domestic policy for John McCain’s 2008 campaign. “We’re going to have to have tax reform,” he said. “The system is broken.”

The U.S. tax code is a disgrace from every aspect but the odds of it being reformed by a deeply divided Congress are zero.  Taxes on all income groups have been too low to cover massive government spending programs and the result is a debt crisis that threatens the solvency of the Nation.  Our political leaders have promised unaffordable benefits to a vast array of constituents and paid for it by maxing out the Nation’s credit limits.

Ultimately, a solution to the Nation’s looming insolvency will require not only dramatic reductions of promised benefits but also large tax increases across all income levels.

The latest Rasmussen poll shows only a minuscule 6% approval rating of Congress by the American public, the worst approval rating on record.  Skepticism runs wide and deep that Congress is able to improve the life of the average American.  Only 9% of voters think Congress can make a positive difference and the latest outrageous example of Solyndra  solar company should change the minds of this misguided 9% of the public.

The poll numbers indicate that what most Americans already know - the U.S. political system rules without the consent of the governed, and even worse, has consistently taken actions that work against the average American.  Rasmussen polling shows that 43% of voters think that members of Congress are corrupt and an astounding 81% believe that members of Congress put their own interests ahead of the public.

Record levels of poverty and unemployment along with plunging income levels for those who still have jobs does nothing to deter Congress from continuing to funnel money to groups represented by corrupt lobbyists and special interest groups. The  $535 million loss for taxpayers on loans given to solar company Solyndra was due to incompetence and insider dealing.   Consider Obama Team Backed $535 Million solyndra Aid As Auditor Warned On Finances.

Solyndra LLC’s workers making solar-power panels in a California factory subsidized by U.S. taxpayers showed “the promise of clean energy isn’t just an article of faith,” President Barack Obama said on a visit to the company in May 2010.

Two months before Obama’s visit, accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP warned that Solyndra, the recipient of $535 million in federal loan guarantees, had financial troubles deep enough to “raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”

The Obama administration stood by Solyndra through the auditor’s warning, the abandonment of a planned initial public offering and a last-ditch refinancing where taxpayers took a back seat to new investors.

“People including our government put blinders on and did not want to believe in the obvious,” Jonathan Dorsheimer, an analyst in Boston for Canaccord Genuity Inc. of Vancouver, said in an interview with Bloomberg Government. “The fact that the government chose Solyndra as their white horse is mind- boggling.”

Days before filing for bankruptcy, Solyndra executives had the audacity to request additional money from the Energy Department but was turned down due to revelations by the media regarding questions of corruption and public waste.  In addition, it was revealed that billionaire George Kaiser’s family trust controls 37% of Solyndra.  Kaiser visited the President 16 times over the course of two years and has raised millions for the Obama campaign.  Solyndra also spent $480,000 of taxpayer money lobbying Congress for more loans.

Kaiser risked nothing but if Solyndra had ever gone public, he would have made huge profits.   Meanwhile, executives at Solyndra have an armful of excuses for their failure and have blamed everyone in sight, including Chinese solar companies.

Now that the Solyndra loans have become a public scandal, investigations and hearings were announced by the same villains in Congress who made the dubious loans to Solyndra to begin with.   Given the circumstances, the only ones who might believe that justice will be done in this case are the 9% of misguided voters who still believe that Congress acts in the public’s best interests.

A miffed President Obama instructed his aides to quickly come up with another 114 proposals to add to his major jobs speech before Congress.  After hearing that Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney rolled out an economic plan with 59 proposals for creating jobs, the President reportedly told aides “Nobody beats me on fresh ideas for creating jobs.  I have twice as many ideas as Romney and I will create twice as many jobs”.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that the President thinks about jobs all the time and even spent a few days while on vacation brainstorming with economic advisers on the unemployment problem.   “This is just typical dirty politics by the opposition to detract from the President’s upcoming jobs speech - there is no reason that Romney couldn’t have waited another couple of days” Carney told reporters.

Carney also belittled Romney’s proposals for creating 11.5 million new jobs, saying that his plan relied too much on private industry.  “Everyone knows that the private sector is firing American workers so that they can be replaced with cheap foreign workers - only the Government can create good high paying jobs and Romney just doesn’t understand this” said Carney.

Meanwhile, Obama’s campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said that even if Romney’s plan created new jobs, it would just “boost oil company profits…give more tax breaks to large corporations and more tax cuts for the wealthiest.”

When pressed for details on what new ideas Obama would reveal in his jobs speech, Carney said “You are just going to have to wait, but don’t forget, the President is an old hand at creating jobs.  His stimulus programs have created over 4 million jobs according to the Congressional Budget Office.  If not for the President’s creative solutions, the unemployment rate would have been 18%.  That’s something people just don’t think about.”