Quote:President Barack Obama is wasting little time returning his party to its roots.

“He has grand plans and no revenue to pay for them,” says Joe Carson, chief economist at AllianceBernstein.

No revenue? No problem. Taxing the wealthy, and eventually the not-so-wealthy, seems to be the new revenue avenue. In fact, everyone who pays taxes will probably pay more in the near future.

And there’s an increasingly small number that do. An estimated 47 percent of tax filers will pay no income tax in 2009, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center. That’s perilously close to a majority. When half the population is on the receiving end of government programs and has no skin in the cost, they will encourage their elected representatives to vote “yes” on every new benefit that comes down the pike.

Quote:What about that aging infrastructure in need of an update? Get businesses to pay for it. A bill introduced in the House of Representatives earlier this week would tax corporate profits to pay for “repairing America’s corroded pipes and overburdened sewer systems,” according to Congressman Earl Blumenauer, Democrat of Oregon, the bill’s chief sponsor. “The $10 billion annual fund will create more than 250,000 jobs.”