WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama is turning to his biggest television audience of the year to pitch tax increases on the wealthiest Americans and put the new Republican Congress in the position of defending top income earners over the middle class.
As Obama continues to signal what he will propose during Tuesday’s State of the Union address, senior administration officials said Saturday that he will call for raising the capital gains rate on top income earners and eliminating a tax break on inheritances. The revenue generated by those changes would fund new tax credits and other cost-saving measures for middle-class taxpayers, officials said.
Tax increases are rarely welcomed by congressional Republicans, who now hold majorities in the House and the Senate for the first time in Obama’s presidency. Obama’s tax proposals will likely be dismissed, if not outright ignored, by lawmakers outside the Democratic Party’s liberal base.
