President Barack Obama is alienating a key constituency for his fundraising: big bankers. They are upset with the proposal in his budget to raise $30 billion over 10 years from banks with more than $50 billion in assets,
Politico reports.
The tax is designed to defray the cost of the government’s bank bailout — the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
Obama’s $30 billion plan was only a third the size of what he requested — and Congress rejected in his initial proposal.
But bankers are still upset, especially since most of the big banks already repaid their TARP money, often at a profit for taxpayers. “They are just coming after us again because we happen to have money,” an executive at a bank that has repaid its TARP money at a profit tells Politico.