Since Mr. Obama expects to achieve significant revenue by taxing people earning over $250,000 I started to think about the tax returns for these people in 2008 and 2009. Considering how far the stock market has dropped I suspect that there will be a lot of high income people who will be reporting significantly lower capital gains on their tax returns. Unless the stock market makes a remarkable rebound, I suspect that quite a few people who reported significant taxable income from their stock portfolios in the past years will not be showing a net capital gain for several years. When you factor in tax loss carry-over’s, it could be several years before capital gains provides taxable income. When you combine this shortfall with expected shortfalls in employee bonuses and commissions, I suspect that the over $150,000 income group will be smaller and provide significantly smaller tax revenue. Since this tax group already pays a disproportionate share of the tax  revenue, it is not hard to conclude that the next president will be looking at a major budget deficit. This affects the Obama plans a bit more than the McCain plans since he has linked his middle class tax rebate to the increased tax revenue from this high income group. It will be extremely tough for either candidate to fulfill any campaign promise.