Jeff Bingaman Wants to Raise Your Taxes

Of course, they won't call it taxes — Jeff Bingaman calls it savings.

Senator Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico democrat, introduced the Automatic IRA Act of 2010 last week. The new legislation would require all firms with 10 or more employees that don't already offer a retirement plan to automatically enroll workers in an IRA. Workers who don't wish to participate would need to take action to opt out or change the default contribution amount and investments.

The default "standardized savins rate" is 3% of the victim's worker's paycheck — an additional 3% in addition to the deductions for federal taxes, state taxes, Social Security, Medicare, medical insurance, HSAs, life insurance, savings bonds, 401(k)s, etc., etc., etc.

It seems we've heard this siren song before. They oriinally sold Social Security as a "savings plan", as "retirement insurance". Of course, that was before Congress stole the money from the "lock box" to use for their general fund expenditures. Now Social Security and Medicare are recognized as taxes (and regressive ones, at that) — not savings, not insurance, and above all not voluntary.

This whole concept stinks. And I hope a lot of people contact Binaman's office to let him know they think so.