You haven't been looking at the proposals have you?  The current proposal is to reduce the allowable tax free 401k contribution to $2400 to make the tax cuts on businesses revenue neutral.  As for taxes being raised, most lefties would be OK with them if those taxes were being raised across the board, and not primarily on the middle class. While, personally, I can afford a bit of a tax increase, I don't like being told that my taxes are going to go down, when in reality they are going to go up and go up quite a bit.