New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
At economic ‘inflection point,’ Biden leans into populist agenda
WASHINGTON — Six months after signing a massive economic stimulus package into law, President Joe Biden on Thursday embarked on a fresh push for trillions of dollars in additional spending, attempting to pivot from an emergency posture to advancing a long-term liberal vision of government.
Taking to the podium in the East Room of the White
House, Biden heralded the return of jobs and other recent economic gains, which he attributed to a combination of federal relief efforts and the arrival of effective coronavirus vaccines. But he stressed the need for even deeper, lasting policy changes to ease the hardships that many Americans have faced since long before the coronavirus took hold.
“This pandemic has been God awful for so many reasons,” Biden said. “But it does present us with an opportunity. We can build an economy that gives working people a fair shot this time. We can restore some sanity and fairness to our tax code. We can make the investments that we know are long overdue in this nation.”
Biden’s pitch marked an important political inflection point: Even as the pandemic simmers, the battered U.S. economy is still much healthier than it was at the start of his presidency, when millions more were out of work and businesses nationwide laid dormant. The improved tail winds have allowed Biden to pivot and pursue a dramatic expansion of the country’s social safety net, chiefly through a series of new spending proposals paid for by tax hikes on wealthy Americans and profitable corporations.
Biden’s wide-ranging address
followed a day after House Democrats took a critical first step in delivering on his broader economic policy goals. Party lawmakers wrapped up a grueling, weeklong process to translate the president’s earlier blueprints into a $3.5 trillion piece of legislation, a proposal they hope to advance as soon as this month.
But the effort also has exposed fissures in Biden’s own party, as Democrats’ liberal and moderate factions snipe at each other over the size and scope of their $3.5 trillion ambitions. Biden also has faced criticism from Republicans, who have assailed his tax and spending plans in recent days out of concern they could worsen the deficit and intensify inflation — charges he sought to rebut Thursday.
“My plan benefits ordinary Americans, not those at the top, who don’t need the help,” Biden said. “It’s a historic middle class tax cut, cutting taxes
for over 50 million families. My Republican friends are making a different choice, though. They’d rather protect the tax breaks of those at the very top than give tax breaks to working families. It’s that simple.”
The economic vision Biden presented is vast: Encapsulated in the so-called Build Back Better Act, which House Democrats finished assembling on Wednesday, the proposal could amount to the largest burst of spending in U.S. history. The president and his congressional allies repeatedly have likened its significance to the Great Society and New Deal initiatives of generations past.
The plan proposes a major expansion of Medicare benefits, invests billions toward combating climate change and proposes granting citizenship to perhaps millions of immigrants. It introduces a bevy of new or expanded federal safety net programs, including guaranteed prekindergarten for young children, paid family
and medical leave for their parents and a wide array of tax credits to help families that are struggling financially.
“This is about the kind of economy we want to have,” said Heidi Shierholz, the president of the Economic Policy Institute and the former chief economist at the Labor Department. “This is about making sure health care, care work, education — the kinds of things that actually create decent lives for people in this country - that we have those things in place.”
To pay for the package, Democrats have proposed new tax hikes targeting high-income earners, who would see their rates jump to 39.6 percent from the existing 37 percent. With the backing of Biden, lawmakers further have endorsed raising taxes on large, profitable corporations to 26.5 percent from the current 21 percent. Other tax increases included in the package touch offshore profits and investors.