It looks like President Obama is firing the
first salvo in the battle to seize the savings of Americans. Their
first target? Retirement accounts. The plan, as it’s starting to come
out, would limit the amount that individuals can keep in these
tax-deferred accounts.

Under the plan, a taxpayer’s tax-preferred retirement account, like an
IRA, could not finance more than $205,000 per year of retirement – or
right around $3 million this year.

Yup. The government is going to decide how much a person
needs for retirement.

The proposal would save around $9 billion over a decade, a senior
administration official said, while also bringing more fairness to the
tax code.

Did you catch the double speak? Confiscating more of your money is
now considered government “savings”. The money Obama wants to
confiscate is the deferred taxes that are granted to those who invest
in these types of accounts. IRAs and 401(k)s encourage long term
savings by deferring the taxes on money placed in those accounts until
it’s withdrawn much later. In fact, there are heavy penalties if a
person withdraws that money before they’ve reached “retirement
age”. Those taxes are not lost.

As an aside, I’d like to note that money in these accounts is not
sitting idle. It’s invested in companies, helping them to grow and
employ more people. Apparently, Obama wants to discourage such
investments in our economy.

Now, let’s take a look at the other half of that last quote. Again,
that magic word “fairness” shows up and once again, it proves that it
does not mean what progressives think it means.

Let’s consider fairness in sports. The NCAA basketball tournament
has been played out over the week or so. Sixty-four teams enter the
tournament and compete until one emerges as the champion. Every team
competes under the same rules. It would not be fair for one team to
have the standard ten foot hoop while the other must use a 20 foot
hoop. Nor would it be fair for one team to be allowed 12 players while
the other is limited to four.

To apply the logic from the Obama proposal to the basketball court,
it would be as if baskets made after a team was more than ten points
ahead or had more than 40 points would only count one point no matter
where on the court the shot was taken.

Let’s come back to the first point about how much a person
needs. Progressives love to define need. No matter the topic, when
they start drawing a line of need, it means that they will soon start
outlawing possession above that line.

Look at the recent gun debates in Colorado and elsewhere. They
declared that a person doesn’t need magazines that hold more than ten
rounds and then started to ban them. They declared that people didn’t
need rifles with certain features like pistol grips and then started
to ban them.

Now look what they’re doing with retirement accounts. They are
declaring that people don’t need more than $205,000 per year. The next
step is obvious. They will begin to confiscate any money stored in
these accounts above this magic number. The recent actions by Cyprus
to seize the money in Cypriots’ bank accounts proves that that will be
the next step.

Americans have two choices to prevent this (short of
revaluation). First, they can vote the looters out of office before
such confiscation can take place. Second, the can pull their money out
of their retirement accounts and stuff it under a mattress in the form
of cash or something of actual value like gold.

Illinois is already taking steps in case people make the second
choice. They
are starting a statewide precious metal registry. As we’ve seen in
the history of guns, registration leads to confiscation. It’s already
happened in American history. When private gold ownership was
outlawed, the banks were closed while Federal agents raided safe
deposit boxes to seize any gold stored within.

Despite the clear evidence to the contrary, President Obama has the
gall to claim that citizens don’t need guns to defend themselves from
the government.

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