FORK IT OVER!
Biden to push $3 TRILLION tax hike
President Biden is expected today to unveil half of a $3 trillion to $4 trillion spending plan funded by massive tax increases.
President Biden on Wednesday will outline a sprawling proposed infrastructure plan with an eyepopping $3 trillion to $4 trillion price tag — and tax hikes of up to $3 trillion to help offset the cost.
A series of tax increases will include a 7 percent bump on the corporate-tax rate and the reversion of the individual income-tax rate on those making more than $400,000 to 39.6 percent, where it stood under President George W. Bush.
“The president has a plan to fix the infrastructure of our country,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters during a Tuesday press briefing. “And he has a plan to pay for it.”
Biden’s “Build Back Better” proposal, a centerpiece of his post-coronavirus strategy, will be split into two packages for Congress to weigh, with the first focusing on infrastructure.
The second is expected to focus on funding Democrats’ domesticpolicy platform, including universal pre-K, tuitionfree community college and care for the elderly and disabled.
The commander in chief will detail the first half during a Wednesday speech in blue-collar Pittsburgh previewed Tuesday by Psaki.
“The speech . . . is about making an investment in America, not just modernizing our roads or railways or bridges, but building an infrastructure of the future,” she said. “So some of it is certainly infrastructure shovel-ready projects, some of it is how do we expand broadband access; some of it is ensuring that we are addressing the needs in people’s homes and communities.”
Despite bipartisan agreement that crumbling roads and bridges are in need of revitalization, the bill is almost certain to encounter Republican resistance, owing to its massive cost and the tax increases proposed to fund it.
A key component is a proposed increase of the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent.
Additionally, Biden’s proposal would impose a minimum tax on US companies’ profits from overseas subsidiaries, hike capital-gains taxes for the wealthy and return to the Bush-era individual tax rate of 39.6 percent for those with incomes over $400,000.
Biden “believes that there’s more that can be done to reward work, not wealth, to ensure that we can invest in the future indusare tries
that
going to help all people in this country,” said Psaki. However, funding for the proposal will not include increased taxes on gas or vehicle mileage, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has clarified, reversing comments he made last week. Buttigieg on Friday suggested that taxing motorists by the number of miles they travel showed “a lot of promise” for funding road construction and maintenance.
But Monday night, Buttigieg hung a U-turn, telling CNN that neither a mileage tax nor gas-tax increase was “part of the conversation about this infrastructure bill.” “I want to reiterate the president’s central commitment here,” he said. “If you’re making less than $400,000 a year, this proposal will not involve a tax increase for you.” Meanwhile, a group of Senate Democrats is pushing to plug a legal loophole that they say has given heirs an “unfair advantage” in dodging so-called
death taxes, as Dems seek to “tackle the inequality” created by inheritance.
The proposal, introduced Monday by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), seeks to tax unrealized capital gains passed down as inheritance.
Under current law, heirs are spared from having to pay a capitalgains tax on assets — such as homes, businesses and certain stocks — whose value has increased prior to the original owner’s death.
The heirs have to pay tax only after they sell and only on gains accrued after the original owner’s
death — creating what’s known as the “stepped-up basis” loophole. Under Van Hollen’s proposal, up to $1 million in unrealized capital gains would be exempt from tax for an individual or $2 million per couple.
Calling it one of the “largest tax breaks in the entire federal tax code,” Van Hollen said the law as it stands now will allow taxpayers to save nearly $42 billion in 2021, citing estimates from the Joint Committee on Taxation.
Four. Trillion. Dollars. That’s how much President Joe Biden wants for his next installment of Let’s Remake America. Think of it as pumping gasoline by the shipload onto a wildfire. Fresh off signing a $1.9 trillion bill for “COVID relief” (that has little to do with COVID or relief ), the prez is now set to roll out a fresh free-money orgy on Wednesday.
It’s so huge, he’s splitting it into two parts. Together, they’d represent the single largest outlay of cash in US history. And the aim is to “fix” everything from the nation’s insufficiently green economy to “income inequality” to child care and manufacturing jobs.
Never mind the president’s thin margin of victory last November and his calls for unity. Biden hopes to be the new FDR, imposing a historic national transformation — including the Green New Deal fantasy of socialists like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
And to help cover this massive spending, Biden will slam taxpayers with trillions more in taxes, particularly on companies and the rich. That’s guaranteed to slow the economy, leading to income stagnation for lower earners, just as President Donald Trump’s tax cuts prompted big gains for working stiffs.
Even if the tax hikes total “only” a staggering $3 trillion, as the latest rumors suggest, much of Biden’s spree will be financed with yet more debt — when Uncle Sam already has more on his credit card than ever. Interest payments on the national debt this year alone total a whopping $378 billion. Biden’s borrowing would push that from the stratosphere and into orbit.
The last (but smaller!) such spending boom that began under President Lyndon Johnson in the ’60s wound up giving America the “stagflation” and double-digit inflation of the ’70s. This one could bring far worse — simply to feed Biden’s ego and AOC’s lunatic agenda.
The voters didn’t remotely ask for anything like this; most just wanted Trump gone. And they certainly don’t deserve the damage it will do to the nation. Yet Democrats will aim to ram it through with whatever tricks are needed — unless their moderates rise up to rein in their suddenly radical leader.