Like a puppy smacked across the nose: Barack Obama to hastily drop proposed 529 tax.

HE CAN BE TAUGHT!

President Obama, facing angry reprisals from parents and from lawmakers of both parties, will drop his proposal to effectively end popular college savings accounts known as 529s, but will keep an expanded tuition tax credit at the center of his college access plan, the White House said Tuesday.

…Although I don’t know why he bothered to keep the tax credit: the aforementioned college access plan isn’t going anywhere anyway.  Oh, I’m sure that something will get signed, eventually.  But precisely what that is will be determined by the adults that the American people put back in control of Congress last November, not the petulant man-child who is still occupying the White House… for less than two more years. Continue reading Like a puppy smacked across the nose: Barack Obama to hastily drop proposed 529 tax.

Barack Obama calculated that calling for 529 tax hikes was safe enough.

Megan McArdle put her finger on precisely why Barack Obama floated the oh-heck-no proposal to tax people’s 529 college funds: “About the only people I saw defending this particular idea were blue-state singles who haven’t yet confronted the monstrous expense of shepherding their progeny into the new mandarin class to which they belong.” …And that’s who Barack Obama was trying to back-channel pander to, of course. In 2012 single voters broke strongly for Obama – single women more so then men – and since a tax hike on college fund earnings wouldn’t affect them too much (especially the ones without kids), Obama probably figures that it’s a ‘safe’ tax hike to have*. Continue reading Barack Obama calculated that calling for 529 tax hikes was safe enough.