In Tuesday’s State of the Union the Orator in Chief proposed cutting back on the tax break afforded to §529 college savings plans. His reasoning? §529s are used primarily by the ‘wealthy.’ We’ll get to that in a moment.

By way of review §529s were established in 1996 as a means for people to save for college in a tax-advantaged manner. The tax advantages were expanded in 2001 and, ahem, made ‘permanent’ by 2006’s Pension Protection Act.

§529s are good policy in that they incentivize people to provide for themselves so that the government need not do so. It’s no different than offering income tax breaks for mortgage interest and real estate taxes so that people are incentivized to provide their own housing rather than live in government-owned housing.

To oversimplify the White House’s argument individuals shouldn’t be in control of saving for their educations. They don’t need tax incentives to fund §529s. Instead government should be in control of paying for education. Want to go to college? No problem, we’ll pay for it…and by we they mean the ‘wealthy.’ That’s right, the way to pay to send everyone to college is by increasing taxes on the ‘wealthy.’ No need to increase the size of the pie when it can simply be redistributed. Ugh.

Newsflash Mr. Obama: the Middle Class uses §529s too – not just the ‘wealthy.’ According to the College Savings Foundation 10% of §529 accounts are owned by households with annual income below $50,000. A full 70% of §529 accounts are owned by households with annual income below $150,000.

In seeking to repeal the ‘permanent’ tax-advantaged status of §529s solely on the (false) premise that they’re used by the ‘wealthy’ is an unmitigated attack on the ‘wealthy.’ Is that how it’s supposed to work? Policy is good policy but if we believe it benefits a group we want to demonize we have to change it? How long before Roth IRAs lose their ‘permanent’ preferential tax status?!

This is the same administration that pushed through sweeping healthcare legislation by selling us on the ‘fact’ that financial penalties for not purchasing coverage are not a tax. We were dumb enough to buy it. (Ironically the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the legislation solely on the fact that…wait for it…wait for it…the United States through Congress has the power to tax its citizens.)

Is anyone still buying the White House’s BS? Is anyone still blind to the hostile, condescending and arrogant tone? We’ll find out in 2016 when we see what percentage of voters show up to feed at the trough.