President Obama came into office pledging not to raise taxes on middle class Americans, “not one dime” he assured us. We are about to find out if his word can be trusted.

Senator Max Baucus released the Senate Finance Committee’s draft proposal on healthcare. And it is packed with tax hikes, new taxes on the wealthy and new taxes on the middle class.

Click here to see Americans for Tax Reform's outline of the cash grab. A few highlights:

• Individual Mandate Tax. If you don’t sign up for health insurance, you will have to pay a tax in the following range:
Single: $750-$900 Family: $1,500-$3,800

• Employer Mandate Tax. $400 per employee if health coverage is not offered. Note: this is a huge incentive to drop coverage, as $400 is much less than the average plan cost of $11,000 for families or $5000 for singles (Source: AHIP)

• Excise Tax on High-Cost Health Plans. New 35% excise tax on health insurance plans to the extent they exceed $21000 in cost ($8000 single)

• Report Employer Health Spending on W-2. This is clearly a setup for the easy individual taxation of employer-provided health insurance down the road.

• Cap Flex-Spending Account (FSA) Contributions at $2000. Currently unlimited.

• Eliminate tax deduction for employer-provided retirement Rx drug coverage in coordination with Medicare Part D

• Medicine Cabinet Tax. Americans would no longer be able to purchase over-the-counter medicines with their FSA, HSA, or HRA

• Corporate 1099-MISC Information Reporting. Currently, only non-corporations providing property or services for a business must be issued at 1099-MISC. This would expand the requirement to corporations doing business with other businesses. The amount of reporting needed for an average business would be huge. Paves the way for full information reporting to the IRS.

• Various industry tax grabs based on market share. $2.3 billion PhRMA; $6 billion health insurance providers; $750 million clinical labs; $4 billion medical device manufacturers

This proposal should be a complete non-starter for President Obama, if he intends to keep his word on taxes. Obama should state quickly and definitively that he opposes the Baucus draft.