Metro

Take a flyin’ leap

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Get ready, all you “millionaires and billionaires” with kids in college and taxes to pay on your homes in and around New York City.

It doesn’t matter that you bring home just $250,000 a year and have a family of four or more. President Obama thinks you’re part of the evil 1 percent and you should pay higher taxes — a lot higher.

That’s the unfortunate reality for many New Yorkers, no matter what happens during the fiscal-cliff negotiations designed to avert taxes going up on everyone, regardless of income, if a deal isn’t reached sometime soon. Those talks have stalled, and many economists are predicting economic Armageddon unless a deal is reached that prevents massive across-the-board tax increases and budget cuts targeted at slashing the defense budget.

Going over the cliff sure won’t be pretty. Even for families earning as little as $50,000 a year, income taxes are to rise from a 13 percent rate to 17 percent — an estimated increased federal income-tax burden of more than $2,000 a year if there’s no cliff deal, according to the Tax Foundation. Of course, the more you make, the more you will pay. All those “billionaire” families living out on Long Island and earning $250,000 a year will pay $9,730 more, while real millionaires who earn $1 million a year will pay $50,267 more in federal income taxes.

What’s so frightening about these numbers is that they don’t take into account all the other taxes President Obama has in store for the country, including those to pay for his ObamaCare mandates, or even state taxes that are sure to drag an economy still fighting to recover from the Great Recession.

What’s also frightening is that things won’t be so great even if so-called cooler heads prevail and a deal is made so only the “rich” get screwed.

Keep in mind, ObamaCare taxes and other fees have nothing to do with the cliff talks. Even worse, the president and his supporters have a warped view on what is rich — and, as a result, on who should be paying more taxes to finance his big-government experiments.

Here in New York, we all know that families with a combined income of $250,000 are really middle class; they certainly don’t live like the president’s favorite billionaire, limousine liberal Warren Buffett, and when they get done paying for the area’s higher cost of living, not to mention school tuition, etc., they’re barely saving enough for retirement.

But using the president’s twisted logic, these folks will be taxed like Warren Buffett.

HOW THE FISCAL CLIFF WILL AFFECT YOU

OBAMA BACK AS CRISIS DEEPENS

FOLKS FREAK OVER SIZE OF TAX HIKES

THESE ARE THE BREAKS – THAT EXPIRE

Bottom line: The president has never gotten over his obsession with taxing people who make $250,000, except for a brief period in 2010, when the Republicans won the House and picked up seats in the Senate.

His 50.96 percent popular-vote victory over Mitt Romney in the recent presidential election (albeit much more pronounced in the Electoral College) has emboldened him to back his original thesis on tax fairness. Sure, he offered his Republican counterpart, namely House Speaker John Boehner, a “deal” to start tax increases at $400,000, but it was an unserious offer; he offered not a single specified spending cut, aside from some cost-of-living adjustments in Social Security, and certainly not enough for Boehner to sell to his skeptical colleagues who wouldn’t even consider starting the tax hikes at $1 million in income without some real spending reductions.

In other words, Obama is negotiating like he wants to drive the country off the cliff so he can get what he really wants — higher taxes, deep defense cuts and an issue to cream the Republicans with over the next four years, namely a lousy economy.

One of the great tragedies is that as New York’s middle class is about to be hammered, two of our most senior elected officials have run for cover. Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand have remained oddly silent as many of their constituents are about to be crushed by Obamanomics and its bizarre notion of what is wealthy.

Schumer even proposed a millionaires tax a couple of years ago, instead of starting the increase in rates at the president’s preferred level of $250,000 a year.

What a difference a 50.96 percent mandate makes. The calculus of Schumer, Gillibrand and, of course, the president might be right, and the economic pain of the fiscal cliff might just be enough to destroy the Republican Party. Or they might be wrong, and the country might ultimately see through their posturing and hold all of them accountable.

Either way, the country loses.

Thanks, Chuck and Kirsten, and, yes, President Obama.