Business

Obama's 2011 Budget Winners and Losers

By Nicole Allan
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Today President Obama revealed his 2011 budget, which would draw funds from big finance to inject them into small businesses. His bank tax would collect $90 billion over the course of the next ten years, while small businesses would receive tax credits for hiring new employees or giving raises. But you can find other winners and losers in the legislation. Here are four of each:


Winners

1) Lower-income families would benefit from stimulus tax breaks that would be extended for another year.

2) Elementary and secondary schools would receive an extra $3 billion, in line with the administration's belief that education drives innovation and competition. College students would benefit from a $17 billion boost to the Pell grant program.

3) The government would funnel $6 billion of Bush-era tax breaks on oil, gas and coal companies to clean energy technologies.  Money would also flow to civilian research and development and regional infrastructure projects, as well as to new TSA screening technologies.

4) A major chunk of discretionary spending, which excludes entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, will go to war spending, which will increase by $33 billion this year and $159 billion in 2011.

Losers

1) Wealthy families would up their contributions to federal coffers as the Bush tax cuts on households making over $250,000 expire, netting the government nearly $1 trillion in additional revenue.

2) Hedge-fund and private equity employees will supply $24 billion over 10 years by having their fees taxed as income rather than capital gains, and multinational corporations will pay higher taxes on overseas earnings.

3) Oil, gas, and coal companies would cough up $40 billion after the elimination of some Bush-era tax breaks.

4) Perhaps the biggest non-financial loser in the proposed budget is NASA. While the agency would see an extra $1 billion a year, several of its prize programs would be slashed, including a return to the moon by 2020. NASA supporters have bemoaned the cuts, worrying that this budget would undermine the country's role in the future of human space flight.