Earlier this year, Nancy Pelosi announced that “everything is on the table” when it comes to paying the Democrats’ government-run health care experiment.  In the bill passed by the House, there are $730 billion in tax increases, including a $460 billion income tax hike.

That huge income tax hike is not likely to pass the Senate, so Majority Leader Harry Reid is back at the table, looking for other taxes to raise instead.  And despite double-digit unemployment, he appears ready to offer tax hikes that will kill more jobs. 

Reid is floating trial balloons about raising the Medicare payroll tax, either to apply to all income for couples earning over $250,000 per year or, as White House Budget Director Peter Orszag has suggested, apply Medicare taxes to capital gains income.  Both of those taxes would hurt the economic growth and job creation, because they hit entrepreneurs especially hard.  Notes The Wall Street Journal:

The move could prove popular with labor unions and others who have strongly opposed the initial plan for a 40% tax on high-value insurance plans, those worth at least $8,000 for individuals or $21,000 for families. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Thursday that a payroll-tax increase on high earners is fairer. ‘We think that's far preferable to taxing the plans,’ Mr. Trumka said in an interview. Others say an extra tax on high earners would crimp the economy, and that taxing the high-value plans would limit wasteful medical spending. The extra Medicare tax ‘takes money out of the system needed to create jobs,’ said John Goodman, president of the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis.