The American people are already well aware of President Barack Obama’s historic expansion of government spending: his $862 billion economic stimulus that has completely failed to keep unemployment below 8% as promised; his still-expanding health care law which the Congressional Budget Office now admits will cost more than $1 trillion; and an Obama budget that increases government spending by $12,000 per household. But all that spending is just the first half of President Obama’s game plan.

The second half of Obama’s attempted transformation began last night when the Senate rejected Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-SC) effort to end the Death Tax. This year is actually the first year since 1916 that Americans do not have to pay any federal taxes when a family member dies. But thanks to the way Congress had to pass the legislation that phased out the Death Tax in 2001, it is set to go from zero percent to 55 percent at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 2010. The Death Tax is but one of many government taxes on capital and entrepreneurship, and its reinstatement will be yet another job killer from the Obama administration. It rewards estate tax lawyers, insurance companies and big businesses at the expense of small family-owned enterprises. According to a study by the American Family Business Foundation, a full repeal of the death tax, like the one rejected by the Senate last night, would create 1.5 million jobs. Before the vote, Sen. DeMint described the tax as an “unfair, immoral double tax on property and assets that folks have already paid taxes on throughout their lives.” He added: “The Obama death tax is just the latest example of this administration’s assault on small businesses.”

Sen. DeMint is dead on. Last night’s vote to raise the Death Tax is just the beginning of the Obama administration’s historic tax hike campaign. Unless Congress acts to oppose President Obama’s agenda,everyone’s taxes on personal income, capital gains and dividends will rise. Married couples will see their taxes rise even higher, as will families with children. According to The Tax Foundation, a family of four with two earners making $85,000 a year would pay about $1,800 more in federal income taxes in 2011. Tax Foundation president Scott Hodge tells MSNBC: “I’m hard pressed to think of another moment in the history of the tax code in which we have had so many provisions expire at the same time impacting so many Americans all at once.”

For two generations after post-war reconstruction, Europe and America have pursued different economic models, and accordingly,  moved in different economic directions. The American model was low tax, low spending and small government. It favored growth, income and vibrancy. The European model is high tax, high spending and big government. It favored fairness, equality and stability. It also featured unemployment rates double those of the United States, often hovering around 10 percent. Now that is no longer the case. Under Obama’s economic leadership, U.S. unemployment rates are surpassing Europe’s.

Last night’s vote was just the beginning of a larger choice the American people must make: do they want to continue down the Obama path of high taxes, high spending and high unemployment? Or do they still believe in American exceptionalism, in limited government and in a vibrant U.S. economy? Last night’s vote was a step in the wrong direction.

Quick Hits:

• While the Obama administration continues to kill thousands of jobs in the Gulf with its oil drilling ban, countries like Norway, Brazil and Canada are increasing their deep-water oil drilling.
• While the oil spill has been an economic disaster for the Gulf, like everything else in the Obama administration, it has been a boon to Washington’s economy as energy and environmental groups spent millionsto shape any energy legislation inspired by the crisis.
• According to The New York Times, the TARP inspector general has called the Obama administration’s mortgage modification program “one of the greatest failures” of the Treasury Department.
• Thanks to unemployed older Americans, illegal immigrants and an increase in the minimum wage, the teen unemployment rate in June was at 25.7 percent – about three times the national rate of 9.5 percent.
• According to Gallup, only 11 percent of Americans say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in Congress, placing them dead last out of the 16 institutions rated this year

‘Unsustainable” is a scary word that recently entered political discourse, coming authoritatively from Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf. Unsustainability is the operative moniker for Barack Obama’s massive deficit spending, which Elmendorf said “cannot be solved through minor tinkering.”

The CBO predicts an increase in our public debt from $7.5 trillion at the end of 2009 to $20.3 trillion at the end of 2020 if Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget is implemented. As a percentage of gross domestic product, the debt will rise to 90% from 53%.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., sharpened the focus by asking the CBO director: “What’s going to be necessary (is) either a 25% increase in taxes or a 20% reduction in spending, or some combination thereof. Is that correct?” Elmendorf replied “yes.”

Americans are beginning to wonder if Greece is the picture of the U.S.’ future. But we need look no further than the place where Obama and his team were trained in community organizing and bully tactics to redistribute the wealth: Illinois.

Illinois was the stomping ground for years for Obama, his top advisers Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, and his appointees such as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. After they promoted themselves to Washington to run the country, other Obama associates who didn’t make the cut continued to run Illinois into the ground, as the Illinois unemployment rate jumped from less than 5% to nearly 11%.

For years, we thought California was the most fiscally irresponsible of all 50 states, but Illinois has now taken the lead. A lengthy news article in the New York Times was headlined: “Illinois Stops Paying Its Bills, but Can’t Stop Digging Hole.”

Under years of Democratic leadership, Illinois has refused to honor its obligations, cut spending or trim its shockingly large deficit, which at $12 billion per year approaches nearly half its budget. As a result, Illinois’ credit rating has been downgraded and it pays a massive amount in interest on its loans.

That’s like a family making $50,000 but spending $75,000 each year. Obviously, it won’t take long before such a family would lose everything it has.

The big-majority Democratic state legislature, defying Illinois’ balanced-budget law, has been passing deficit budgets for years. The new definition of a liberal is no longer tax-and-spend; it’s borrow-and-spend.

It’s no surprise that unemployment keeps increasing, and the reason why the rate isn’t higher than we are told is that the government has stopped counting people who have given up looking for a job. Employers are not hiring because taxes and regulations are expected to rise.

Starting Jan. 1, 28 million middle Americans will be socked with a massive Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), which Republicans had suspended. That’s a “gotcha” that penalizes taxpayers in ways they never expect, adding big tax penalties based on an “alternative” way of calculating taxes due.

Upper-income Americans will see a big jump in their marginal tax rates. Their accountants are already telling them that the more they work, the less additional money they will take home, so they may be already slowing down, canceling investments or retiring to draw Social Security.

Hardworking parents who are saving for their children’s future will be hit by the reinstatement of the massive “death tax” on Jan. 1. They may wonder why they work hard and save if their money will go to Uncle Sam and to people who choose not to work.

Marriage penalties will hit couples hard, both in the income tax law and in ObamaCare. Obama’s financial favoritism toward unmarried women, his second biggest voting bloc, has become common knowledge.

Those who choose to control their own health care through Health Savings Accounts will be slapped with new taxes. That’s just one more way to promote Obama’s goal of moving all health care to government control.

Employers are not hiring because they know they will soon be paying not only higher taxes but also more health care costs or penalties. Depreciation allowances for investment in equipment will be lowered from $250,000 to $25,000, which means businesses will do less investing.

Our ability to compete in the marketplace, of course, depends on our advanced research and development. New taxes will hit R&D hard, which means more slowdowns and more outsourcing overseas.

The expiration of the GOP tax cuts will impose the largest tax hikes in history, affecting all taxpayers. The nearly 50% who pay no taxes will also be hurt by more loss of jobs.

There is only one antidote for these depressing prognostications. On Nov. 2, American voters will have the chance to choose real change from Obama’s failed Illinois borrow-and-spend policies by electing Republicans who commit to extend the expiring tax cuts.

Now this  card from Americans for Tax Reform is fun  work,

You may have noticed that President Obama has broken his central campaign promise – a “firm pledge” that Americans making less than $250,000 would not see “any form of tax increase.” He first broke this pledge sixteen days into his presidency when he signed a 156 percent increase in the federal excise tax on tobacco. And Obamacare contains 21 tax increases – several of which violate his “firm pledge”.

To protect you from these tax hikes, Americans for Tax Reform presents the “Obama Tax Hike Exemption Card”. The card fits neatly in your wallet and contains a list of the tax hikes signed into law by President Obama that violate his tax pledge, as well as a few other taxes that have been threatened: a European-style Value-Added Tax, Cap and Trade taxes, and even a federal soda tax.

Fill out the form below to get your Obama Tax Hike Exemption Card

How to use the card:

Step 1: Present the card to merchants, employers, and tax authorities.

Step 2: If challenged, pleasantly ask: “Are you calling President Obama a liar?”

“I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

–Candidate Barack Obama, Sept. 12, 2008

“If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.”

–President Barack Obama, Feb. 24, 2009

“The statement didn’t come with caveats.”

–Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs, April 15, 2009, when asked if the pledge applies to healthcare

Know what this card is? A reminder that Barack Obama would no more lie to the American people than he would bow to a foreign leader, raise the deficit, or go to a racist church for 20 years.

The Internal Revenue Service declared that it would tax BP’s Obama-mandated $20 billion slush fund at the same rates other income is taxed. It’s common knowledge that BP offered up the $20 billion only after Obama twisted his arm, so this new scheme shouldn’t come as a surprise. The President is desperate to fund his costly public programs before a scorching November election during which the budget will be on center stage.

Assuming the lowest level of federal income tax (10%) that means the federal government stands to profit by $2 billion over the course of the tragedy. That windfall could go as high as $7 billion, depending on who receives the money. In a year when so many Americans are out of work — and not paying taxes — it’s critical to find other sources of revenue. Otherwise, Obama cannot say that he’s actually paid for the keystones of his Presidency — federal bailouts, Obamacare, and cap-and-trade.

This is morally despicable. In a decent world, oil spill victims would receive the full share of their restitution payments, because they’ve just endured a life-altering disaster. But it also represents a horrible, conniving maneuver by our President, who has no problem using disaster victims to pay for his political objectives.

Under the Obama Administration, the Democrats are unleashing a bevy of unpalatable surprises for women, including massive up-front government expansions and enormous tax increases that produce problems for American women and their families. As Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) recently said, “The government now owns 51 percent of the private sector.” In just 18 months, the current administration has produced extraordinary “change”; indeed, it threatens a huge “transformation” of America. The majority of citizens not only disapprove of these “changes” and “transformations,” they actively oppose them. Citizens have picketed, protested, held town halls to express their opposition, and responded to poll after poll indicating their overwhelming opposition to the actions of the Democrat majority and the socialist agenda of the President.

Yuval Levin called the new law a “ghastly mess” and traced its development; it “began as a badly misguided technocratic pipe dream and was then degraded into ruinous incoherence by the madcap process of its enactment.”

Controversy and secrecy surrounded the passage of ObamaCare, but the incident with Joe Wurzelbacher, a plumber in Holland, Ohio, kept echoing in reports and analyses of the bill. Obama, the candidate, said, “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” That off-the-cuff remark stayed in critics’ minds, even when the President and the Democrat-controlled Congress suppressed open debate and the media focused on other aspects of the bill. Now that the bill was rammed through and the President has signed it, Democrat politicians, from Senator Max Baucus to Vice President Joe Biden, are remarkably open about the real purpose of the bill — to spread the wealth around.

Trouble is, women and families are the ones who bear the brunt of Obamanomics’ income redistribution.

With the specifics of the legislation a closely-guarded secret known only to the liberal elite in Congress while it was under deliberation, it was not immediately clear that women and families were the ones bearing the brunt of the new taxation hidden in ObamaCare. Supporters didn’t talk about the bill’s marriage penalty — the fact that it will redistribute wealth from married couples to cohabiting couples. They also didn’t mention the fact that “people on Medicare and Medicaid, disproportionately women, would receive less care and possibly worse care.” Plus, nobody talked about the fact that the bill penalizes those employers that hire low-income workers, primarily single mothers and housewives needing a second income. So, instead of encouraging single mothers to marry the father of their children and to become financially independent by facilitating job growth, ObamaCare creates another avenue of dependency through health insurance subsidies.

Another issue lies with the impending tax increases and the growing burden on Americans to comply with the federal tax code. According to the IRS’s Taxpayer Advocate Service, “The Code has grown so long that it has become challenging even to figure out how long it is.” Their best estimate is that it contains approximately 3.7 million words. The Tax Foundation reported that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulations currently have nearly 7 million words — an 18.7 percent increase since 1995 and, amazingly, almost nine times the total number of words in the King James Bible.

Carrie L. Lukas, in her article, “The Tax Man Cometh,” reports that in addition to losing about 30 percent of our income for federal, state, and local taxes (more than the typical family spends on food, clothing, and housing combined), Americans spend nearly 4 billion hours in complying with income tax laws. The cost of all this time is estimated at $110 billion. Further, Lukas reports, Americans paid nearly $30 billion for expert help in preparing their tax forms, including software programs and hiring tax preparation professionals. Do you remember that, among all the broken promises, last year President Obama pledged on Tax Day to “make it easier, quicker, and less expensive for you to file a return, so that April 15th is not a day that is approached with dread every year”? Yet, over the past five years, the time individuals spent filling out tax forms increased a full hour due to the confusing and complex process. For corporations, the process is equally burdensome, costing $159.4 billion — Lukas explains that “for every dollar the government raises in revenue from corporations, companies have to pay out more than $1.50.”

Compliance with the IRS regulations is a major burden on American citizens. Further, the Tax Freedom Day group acknowledges that the average American works for the government from January 1 to April 8 — a full 99 days — in order to pay his or her taxes. And we haven’t seen anything yet. Unless Congress takes action or the results of the 2010 election shift the power dynamics in Congress after November, Americans face unprecedented tax increases from 2010 through 2013.

We would do well to remember that our society has suffered grievously from programs and policies that meant well but failed miserably — and on a colossal scale — as is documented by an abundance of data and the obvious social trends in America. With ObamaCare and tax increases, we face yet another ill-advised call for a return to the old failed social welfare policies of entitlement, and it is distressing to contemplate the lapse back into the old ways of victimhood these new initiatives seem destined to rekindle for the nation’s women and families.

When President Obama asked former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and Democrat Erskine Bowles to chair his debt commission in February, he told them to consider any and all ways to reduce the federal deficit – including new taxes, apparently.

Bowles, a former chief of staff in the Clinton White House, told Fox News Sunday that “the president looked Senator Simpson and me in the eye and he said, ‘Everything is on the table.’ So we are going to look at every single way to right this fiscal ship,” Bowles said. That includes cutting “sacred cows” and raising revenue, he added.

“We have to have everything on the table,” including a value added tax, Bowles said.

“I think there are many good arguments that you can make for a value-added tax or consumption tax, as opposed to a tax on wages. But I think it’s just one of the things that ought to be on the table that we ought to discuss. I’m not for taking anything off the table.”

Bowles refused to say if he personally thinks a VAT is a good idea. “I want to see the pros and cons discussed, and then I want to see us make some decisions and some hard recommendations.”

Simpson said before imposing a value-added tax, the nation needs to deal with the income tax. “You can’t have a VAT tax and then leave the present [income tax] structure,” he said.

Simpson said something has to be done: “We have the ability, and I hope the trust of each other, to adjust and put together a package. And if the American people and the Congress don’t like it, then just let them sink, because Greece is sinking on debt and deficit; Spain is next; Portugal is next. How would you like to be the United States of America when China pulls the tin cup and says we don’t want T-bills, we want money? Now, that’s where we are. It’s serious business.”

The commission is supposed to get its recommendations to President Obama by December 1, shortly after the midterm election.

According to Bowles, waiting until after the election is a good idea: “It gets the politics out of it and gives us a chance to build up some trust to get to some real hard recommendations,” he said.

The debt commission – formally named the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform – will examine ways “to meaningfully improve” the nation’s long-term fiscal outlook, the executive order says.

The panel also will “examine changes to address the growth of entitlement spending and the gap between the projected revenues and expenditures of the Federal government over the long term.”

From InvestmentNews.com:

The law will keep people from using their HSAs to cover over-the-counter drugs without a prescription. What’s more, it raises the penalty for non-medical early withdrawals to 20%, from 10%. Those moves will harm the HSA industry, noted Ryan Ellis, tax policy director for Americans for Tax Reform…

Before the law was enacted, penalties for withdrawing from HSAs for non-medical purposes were similar to those paid for early withdrawals from an individual retirement account. But the increase in penalties will deter accountholders from placing funds into their HSAs, Mr. Ellis said.

“Before the law went into effect, you received tax deductions for putting money into the IRA and for the HSA, and now you have this higher penalty on top of a tax rate,” Mr. Ellis said. “The HSA is less accessible when you put the money in, and for that reason, it would be the last thing you would fund.”

From BigGovernment.com:

Millions of Americans will “see” an effective 40 percent tax hike on the over-the-counter medicines – from an antihistamine such as Claritin for allergies, pain relief medicine such as Tylenol or Excedrin, Pedialyte to prevent their kids from becoming dehydrated when they are sick, and even prenatal vitamins if they are expecting another one…if you pay for any of these items with money in your flexible spending account (FSA) or health savings account (HSA) – and according to this guide from FSA administrator Benesyst , all of these are eligible expenses — you will face an effective tax increase of up to 40 percent on these items in the health care bill that President Obama recently signed.

The bill restricts individuals with these pre-tax accounts to buying a “medicine or drug only if such medicine or drug is a prescribed” one. And ironically, this tax that will raise health care costs substantially by creating incentives for the use of more expensive prescription drugs even when OTC drugs are just as safe and effective…

Drugs are increasingly becoming available over-the-counter without prescription. Many health plans no longer cover the cost of these drugs as over-the-counter. While an over-the-counter drug is less expensive than the prescription drug, the cost to many consumers increases because the price paid by the consumer for the over-the-counter drug is greater than the co-payment by the consumer when the drug was covered by insurance. This is especially an issue for individuals who remedy chronic health problems by regularly taking an over-the-counter medicine…

Since HSAs and FSA contributions are exempt from both income taxes and 15.3 percent payroll tax for Social Security and Medicare, and since these together can reach more than 40 percent of an employee’s salary, the effective tax increase on these medicines could be more than 40 percent.

And this tax change will almost certainly cost the health care system billions more dollars in unnecessary spending both to the government and private insurance plans…OTC drugs are much cheaper those available for prescription, but they could now be more expensive to individual consumers given that prescription drugs would still be eligible for favored treatment in the tax plans, and that insurance companies would be mandated to cover many of them. Consequently, any time a consumer has the slightest headache, the financial incentive would often be to see a doctor and get a prescription rather than go to the store and get medicine off the shelf.

This could mean that billions will be wasted on the additional costs for prescription drugs in instances when OTC medicines could be just as safe and effective at treating the illness. A 2005 study in the American Journal of Managed Care found that the Food and Drug Administration’s clearing of antihistamines such as loratadine (Claritin) for over-the-counter sale saves about $4 billion a year in health care costs. Ironically, the liberals and Democrats who normally rail against big pharmaceutical companies are now creating a huge windfall the firms that make expensive prescription drugs by penalizing users of OTC medicines.

The rallying cry for opponents of Obamacare has been “Hands off my health care.” In addition, they now could say, “Hands off my medicine cabinet.”…

From Americans For Tax Reform:

President Obama is about to break his central campaign promise: a “firm pledge” not to raise “any form” of taxes on families making less than $250,000 per year. The healthcare bill passed by the House and Senate contains seven taxes that unquestionably violate Obama’s pledge.

(Page numbers reference ORIGINAL REID-OBAMA BILL unless noted):

Individual Mandate Excise Tax (Page 324/Sec. 1501/Jan 2014*): Starting in 2014, anyone not buying “qualifying” health insurance must pay an income surtax according to the higher of the following (page 71 of manager’s amendment updates Reid bill):

Exemptions for religious objectors, undocumented immigrants, prisoners, those earning less than the poverty line, members of Indian tribes, and hardship cases (determined by HHS).

Employer Mandate Tax (Page 348/Sec. 1513/Jan 2014*): Small business owners pay their business taxes on their personal 1040 forms. This tax does not exempt startup small business owners even if they make less than $250,000. If the employer does not offer health coverage, and at least one employee qualifies for a health tax credit, the employer must pay an additional non-deductible tax of $750 for all full-time employees. Applies to all employers with 50 or more employees.

If the employer requires a waiting period to enroll in coverage of 30-60 days, there is a $400 tax per employee ($600 if the period is 60 days or longer).

Medicine Cabinet Tax (Page 1997/Sec. 9003/$5 bil/Jan 2011): Americans would no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).

HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike (Page 1998/Sec. 9004/$1.3 bil/Jan 2011): Increases additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.

Flexible Spending Account Cap – aka “Special Needs Kids Tax” (Page 1999/Sec. 9005/$14 bil/Jan 2011): Imposes cap on FSAs of $2500 (now unlimited). Indexed to inflation after 2011 (added on page 363 of manager’s amendment). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education.

Medical Itemized Deductions Cap (Page 2034/Sec. 9013/$15.2 bil/Jan 2013): Currently, those facing high medical expenses are allowed a deduction if the total cost of the expenses reduces the filer’s income by 7.5%. The new provision would impose a threshold of 10%. This new tax will most adversely affect early retirees and the catastrophically ill. Waived for 65+ taxpayers in 2013-2016 only.

Tax on Indoor Tanning Services (Page 373 of Manager’s amendment/$2.7 billion/July 1, 2010): New 10% excise tax on Americans using indoor tanning salons

NONE OF THE ABOVE PROVISIONS EXEMPTS FAMILIES MAKING LESS THAN $250,000

As many as a dozen taxes in the new health care law violate President Barack Obama’s campaign pledge not to raise taxes on families earning less than $250,000 and on individuals earning less than $200,000.

At least seven of these taxes directly affect health consumers regardless of income, such as the individual mandate to buy insurance, the employer mandate, the tanning tax, and limits and penalties on health savings accounts. In addition, Republicans argue that the tax impact of the law should include indirect taxes, such as the annual taxes on the health care sector that will be passed on to consumers.

On many occasions during the 2008 presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama pledged that, if elected, he would ensure that Americans earning less than $250,000 a year would not see a federal tax increase of any kind.

“I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increases,” the Illinois senator told a crowd in Dover, N.H. on Sept. 12, 2008. “Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

As president, Obama repeated the pledge during his Feb. 24, 2009 address to a joint session of Congress.

“If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not a single dime,” the president said.

The bulk of the $500 billion in tax increases in the new health care law targets households earning $250,000 and individuals earning $200,000 — for example, the increase in the Medicare payroll tax. But many of the taxes hit the general public at large.

The individual mandate, for example,  will require all legal U.S. residents to purchase a government-approved health insurance plan beginning in 2014. Once the reconciliation bill is voted on in the Senate to amend the law signed by Obama this week, the individual mandate will require a single person to pay 2.5 percent of their income or $695 if they do not purchase health insurance.

Generally, a single person making $30,000 or more will have to pay a 2.5 percent penalty if they do not carry health insurance. A person making less than $30,000 will have to pay $695. This penalty/tax is found in Section 1501 of the bill for “requirement to maintain minimum essential coverage.

The government will also mandate that employers provide health insurance for their employees. This mandate would include small businesses with revenues below $250,000 per year. If the employer does not provide health insurance, the business will have to pay a tax of $750 for each full-time employee. For the employer who requires a waiting period of 30-to-60 days, there is a $400 tax per employee and $600 per employee if the business takes longer than 60 days to comply. This is found in Section 1513 of the bill for “shared responsibility for employers.”

Under the new law, Americans would not be able to use pre-tax dollars from health savings accounts (HSA), flexible spending accounts (FSA), or health reimbursements accounts (HRA) to buy over-the-counter non-prescription medicines. This measure takes effect in 2011 and is supposed to bring in $5 billion dollars. This is found in Section 9003 of the law, under “Distributions for medicine qualified only if for prescribed drug or insulin.”

“Many of us expected the president would violate his pledge,” Boustany told CNSNews.com. “HSAs and FSAs are a prime example. There are other adjustments we will find as we dig into this law. The more the American people see, the more they will find how the amount of tax increases affects them personally.”

Further, the law increases the tax from 10 percent to 20 percent for non-medical early withdrawals from a health savings account for those under the age of 65. This measure takes effect in 2011 and is estimated to increase revenues by $1.3 billion. This is under Section 9004, “Increase in additional tax on distributions from HSAs and Archer MSAs not used for qualified medical expenses.”

Beginning in 2011, the government will impose a cap of $2,500 on FSAs, which are now unlimited, as a means of raising $14 billion in revenue. This is under Section 9005, “Limitation on health flexible spending arrangements under cafeteria plans.”

Those seeking a tan without catching natural rays will find a new 10-percent excise tax on using indoor tanning salons. The tax, estimated to raise $2.7 billion, will take effect in July. This is under Section 10907, “Excise tax on indoor tanning services in lieu of elective cosmetic medical procedures.”

Now, medical expenses that exceed 7.5 percent of a person’s adjusted gross income can be deducted for tax purposes. But the new law raises that deduction threshold to 10 percent of adjusted gross income, meaning fewer tax deductions for someone with high medical costs. This provision starts in 2013 and is supposed to raise $15.2 billion in revenue. This is under Section 9013, “Modification of itemized deduction for medical expenses.”

The law also imposes a 40-percent tax on high-cost insurance plans reaching $10,200, but exempts union members unless the cost of their plan reaches $27,500. This is called the “Cadillac tax.” This tax is actually on the insurer. This goes into effect in 2018 and is estimated to raise $32 billion in revenue.

There is also a tax on insured and self-insured health plans for a patient-centered outcomes research trust fund. Boustany called this a slush fund for the Department of Health and Human Services to dole out grants.

The government estimates it will bring in $107 billion in revenue from new taxes on insurance companies, drug manufacturers and medical device manufacturers. These are three separate indirect taxes that will be passed on to consumers, Republicans contend.

“The annual tax on drug manufacturers and device makers will all be passed along to the consumer,” Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) told CNSNews.com. “The high-cost plan will encourage some employees to join a union to get a 40-percent discount.”

But Americans for Tax Reform, a libertarian taxpayer-advocacy group, does not believe it is necessary to consider indirect taxes.

“Frankly, you can say any tax is going to affect consumers. We didn’t need to really stretch to include too many other things,” ATR tax policy analyst Ryan Ellis told CNSNews.com. “We have seven that were pretty clear violations of President Obama’s pledge not to raise taxes on these people. The one you always hear people bring up is the Cadillac excise tax. That’s not a tax on people, that’s a tax on the insurance company. We’ve never asserted that that is a tax [on consumers] because frankly it isn’t. We don’t need to make that argument because there are seven that clearly are.”

Just before signing the bill into law, President Obama said, “And this represents the largest middle-class tax cut for health care in our history.”

A Democratic spokesman for the House Ways and Means Committee could not be reached for comment on Wednesday. But after Obama signed the bill on Tuesday, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sander Levin (D-Mich.) said in a statement that the law provides tax credits for four million small businesses.

“Today, in the greatest of American traditions – opportunity and community – we enacted a law that will improve the overall health of our citizens and the overall well-being of our nation,” Levin said in the March 23 statement. “This legislation was the product of generations of hard work, driven by the personal stories of so many who have suffered from a lack of health insurance and the devastation of rising health care costs.”

So President Obama wants to slap a tax on banks, but should you really care? Absolutely. Those taxes are going to wind up costing YOU money, whether you’re a customer, a bank employee or an investor, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

As ABC News reports, the CBO wrote a letter yesterday to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) in which it highlighted that the American people will bear the true brunt of the President’s proposal. From the CBO’s letter:

[T]he ultimate cost of a tax or fee is not necessarily borne by the entity that writes the check to the government.

The cost of the proposed fee would ultimately be borne to varying degrees by an institution’s customers, employees, and investors.

Customers would probably absorb some of the cost in the form of higher borrowing rates and other charges, although competition from financial institutions not subject to the fee would limit the extent to which the cost could be passed to borrowers. Employees might bear some of the cost by accepting some reduction in their compensation, including income from bonuses, if they did not have better employment opportunities available to them. Investors could bear some of the cost in the form of lower prices of their stock if the fee reduced the institution’s future profits.

President Obama announced his bank tax during his State of the Union Address in January and claimed it would be a way to recoup money dished out to banks as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program bailout. The truth, though, is that those banks already paid-back the bailouts, with interest; the real deadbeat offenders are Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Chrysler and General Motors, who have yet to repay their debt. (Take a look at the above chart to see who has repaid – and who hasn’t.)

The President’s proposal was a not-so-thinly-veiled populist proposal, intended to play to an America disgruntled with government bailouts and those institutions that won government handouts.

He better brace himself for an America that finds itself even more disgruntled when they realize they’re getting hit with the very tax that was meant to appease them.