which was 2011, I believe. OR 2012. Anyway, Obama and Congress made them permanent with a few tweaks.

The wealthy sent their thanks. The National Debt screamed in agony.

You might want to do some research next time.

... Obama's target was 250k. To get enough votes as Presdient, he raised it slightly to 400k (for individuals, 450k for couples).

Obama also obtained some other concessions from the GOP like lower caps on tax deductions for the upper income brackets.

Ultimately, he ensured that the 99% did not see a tax increase and the top 1% saw their base tax rate return to about 39.0%.

There are lots of folks who don't know this.

However a lot of folks don't really care about the facts. They simply come up with shit to trash Obama, and they don't really care if they are right or wrong, as long as some here on DU will believe them without checking for themselves. It's been going on since he was elected.

Meanwhile, Obama got almost everything he wanted, and the purists screamed bloody murder.

And now we have OPs like this repeating the nonsense.

Which the GOP used as a bargaining tool. DUers used that one against Obama for years. Like, who cares about the unemployed during a financial crisis, right? Just let them go to hell.

on dividends and capital gains.

but it blew too big a hole in the budget so they had to make them temporary (lasting "only" 9 or 10 years i think) in order to make the budget projections palatable enough to get the necessary votes.

this only served to give them an issue to continue to run on, to make the cuts permanent, to accuse democrats of hiking taxes simply because their own cut was going to expire, and to take credit for simply extending their own tax cut.

it probably worked to their advantage to have had them "temporary" at first, though at the time, if they could have, they certainly would have made them "permanent" from the start.


as others have pointed out, obama changed the rates back up for the higher brackets.

Top rate went from 35% to 39.6% on ordinary income.

Long term capital gains tax jumped from 15% to 20% for those whose incomes exceeded a certain amount.

Qualified dividends tax jumped from 15% to 20% for those whose incomes exceeded a certain amount.

Obama made the tax cuts on the 99% permanent and raised taxes back up on the 1%. The one compromise he had to make was that the threshold for the higher rate was raised from $250k to $450.

To be in the top 1% you have to make more than $450k a year, so you are part of the 99% if you make less, and you kept your tax cut.