Everyone takes a hit in Biden’s ‘tax the rich’ plan

Joe Biden never played with dominoes as a kid.

If he had, he’d know that when one falls, it sends the rest tumbling after. It’s a simple lesson in cause and effect.

For Biden, it’s all about tipping over a domino and walking away, convinced that physics will take a day off. Pushing through $1T+ bills to fund his climate change agenda and other pricey bits of legislation spurred the breakneck inflation the country is still feeling. Turning off the spigot on the Keystone Pipeline in his war against fossil fuels helped elevate the price of gas.

Lessons learned? Nothing. Biden keeps doubling down, pushing his student loan forgiveness scheme that will make our already enormous national debt balloon further. That the Supreme Court is on the fence about the legality of the plan hasn’t been taken as a chance to consider the fallout should it pass. A nay vote is seen as a potential catastrophe for Democrats and the young voters they court.

Now the president is targeting tax increases on wealthy individuals and corporations in a proposed budget plan that he says will reduce the deficit by $2 trillion over the next decade, according to The Hill.

One thing we’ve all learned, when Biden says something will cost nothing or save trillions, it means taxpayers will be on the hook for an exorbitant bill.

During his State of the Union address last month, Biden said that his budget will lower the deficit and extend the solvency of the Medicare Trust Fund “by making the wealthy and big corporations begin to pay their fair share.”

How come taxing the heck out of high earners who already pay 40% of taxes, according to IRS data, is fair, but asking students to pay off the loans they took out of their own volition is not?

The White House Tuesday unveiled a proposal to raise the Medicare surtax on earned and unearned income above $400,000 from 3.8% to 5%. Biden is also expected to reintroduce two staples of his 2021 Build Back Better agenda, raising the top marginal income tax rate from 37% to 39.6% and raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%.

Raising the corporate tax rate has a considerable domino effect. As Forbes reported, any corporate tax increase will be paid by either shareholders/owners, employees in the form of lower wages, or customers in the form of higher prices. A study from 2016 finds that shareholders/owners bear around 40% of state corporate income taxes while employees bear 30 to 35%. So, even though corporate tax increases are not levied directly on workers, they still affect workers indirectly by lowering their wages.

And while Democrats like to paint Wall Street as the enemy, much of the middle class is funding their retirement years with 401(k)s and pensions. The higher the corporate tax, the lower the corporate profits and therefore stock market returns.

Lower wages, shrinking retirement funds — none of this is good for the economy, or the American people.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell noted “the American people can thank the Republican House” that Biden’s proposed tax increases “will not see the light of day.”

We can only hope.