Biden dubbed the Six Trillion Dollar Man

Republicans lash out over spending spree

• Republicans on Thursday branded Joe Biden the Six Trillion Dollar Man as they vowed to bitterly oppose his plans for the biggest expansion of the U.S. government’s role in over half a century.

In his first speech to Congress, the president outlined massive spending programs, adding up to US$6 trillion, which would be paid for by a host of taxes on the wealthy.

That would include doubling capital gains tax on people making over US$1 million to 43.4 per cent, raising corporation tax from 21 per cent to 28 per cent, and the top rate of income tax from 37 per cent to 39.6 per cent.

Biden said he wanted to make a “once-in-a-generation investment” and undertake the “largest jobs plan since World War Two,” calling it a “blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America.”

He pointedly rejected the “small government” philosophy espoused by Ronald Reagan and said he would focus on recouping more money from millionaires, billionaires and corporations. He said: “My fellow Americans, trickle-down economics has never worked. It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom and middle out. There are good guys and women on Wall Street. But Wall Street didn’t build this country. The middle-class built this country. And unions built the middle-class.”

He will face a battle to get his proposals through Congress amid unified Republican opposition, and even some Democratic concern over their scale.

Joe Manchin, a Democratic senator from West Virginia, said: “It’s a lot of money, a lot of money. That makes you very uncomfortable.” Delivering the Republican response to the speech, Tim Scott, the only black Republican senator, accused Biden of setting out “socialist dreams” and “pulling us further and further apart.”

Karl Rove, the influential Republican strategist, called Biden the Six Trillion Dollar Man, a reference to 1970s TV series The Six Million Dollar Man.

He said the “unsustainable” spending would make Democrats “vulnerable” in mid-term congressional elections in November 2022.

Chris Christie, the former Republican presidential candidate, compared Biden to a “15-year-old with a credit card.” Biden argued that his US$2.3 trillion plan to rebuild infrastructure would create millions of jobs.

The president then cast his Us$1.8-trillion American Families Plan, which would provide childcare, paid parental leave and community college education, as a long-term measure to out-compete China.