Biden’s Tax Hike Agenda
His plan would raise taxes on everyone and would serve only to hamstring the economy.
Joe Biden wants to tax as many dollars and cents out of the American public as he can get away with confiscating. That is the practical takeaway from his recently published 2025 budget plan.
Couched in the Democrats’ tired and disingenuous rationale of making sure the rich “pay their fair share,” Biden wants to massively increase the capital gains tax. Currently, the maximum tax on capital gains is 20%. Biden’s plan is to raise it to 45%.
Of course, the Biden administration claims this will only affect the wealthy. The fact that the American economy is a capitalistic free market quickly belies this dishonest oversimplification.
Capital gains result from people’s investments. The more people invest, the more businesses grow, the economy expands, and industry develops. Therefore, the more money people have to invest freely, the greater the overall capital or fuel for powering the economy.
But taxing capital gains acts as an investment inhibitor, which throttles the economy. When the government increases capital gains taxes, it removes the incentive of those with wealth to invest — and everyone, not just the wealthy, loses.
What is so maddening about Democrats when it comes to taxes is their apparent abject inability to understand basic economics. They assume that taxing people more will result in more revenue for the government, but that is a shortsighted approach to generating temporary revenue growth for the government’s coffers that only serves to slow economic growth. They do this for political purposes, of course, not economic ones.
The great irony is that in the long run, the government would actually gain tax revenue by lowering tax rates, especially for the wealthy and corporations, who already pay the overwhelming majority of the tax burden. With the federal government spending money like a drunken sailor and sending the national debt over the $34 trillion mark, one would think that generating greater revenue to pay down the dangerous level of debt would be a priority — but apparently not for the Biden administration.
Raising the capital gains tax to astronomical levels, though, is only part of Biden’s budget plan. He also intends to make sure the Trump-era tax cuts expire, which would raise tax rates on everyone, not just the wealthy as Biden claims.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked whether her boss still supports that expiration without anything else in place. She responded by dodging the question and then rambling about Biden’s bogus talking point: “So, look, the — as you said, the president is going to allow — is going to — is — is going to let the Trump tax cut expire. And he was very clear. But he will not raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year. That is — that is part of the budget that you saw come out. And it’s going to expire for the wealthy. So, [he’s] been very clear about that.” She added, “You know, look, this is a president that’s going to make sure that we protect and not raise taxes for — for people making $400,000 and less a year.”
Jean-Pierre was pressed again by her questioner: “But still, the president can’t pick and choose which part of the law sunsets. The entire law will sunset. And the — the Tax Foundation says that someone who’s married, two kids, making $85,000 would pay $1,700 more in taxes. That’s somebody under $400,000 who would…”
She interrupted to repeat the same nonsensical talking point about how Biden would “protect working- — working- and middle-class Americans making less than $400,000 a year. He’s been very clear on th- — about that.”
Is KJP ever clear about anything?
The relevant question is this: How exactly would Biden be keeping his promise not to raise taxes on Americans making less than $400,000 a year if he does away with the Trump tax cuts? The answer amounted to, He will, but we can’t tell you how.
Once again, do these people even know how money works? Apparently not, given a recent viral video clip from one of Biden’s top economic advisers, Jared Bernstein. In an interview for a documentary called “Finding the Money,” he was asked why, since the government prints money, it doesn’t just borrow money. The presented idea is known as Modern Monetary Theory, or what might best be described as the economics of crackpots. In other words, it’s the economic equivalent of claiming that money does grow on trees.
Bernstein, who has no degree in economics, responded by offering a muddled non-answer: “The U.S. government can’t go bankrupt, because we can print our own money. Like you said, they print the dollar, so why does the government even borrow? Again, some of this stuff gets — some of the language and concepts are just confusing. The government definitely prints money, and it definitely lends that money by selling bonds. Is that what they do? They sell bonds, yeah, they sell bonds. Right? Since they sell bonds, and people buy the bonds and lend them the money.”
After more rambling, Bernstein concluded: “I guess I’m just, I can’t really, I don’t get it, I don’t know what they’re talking about. … It’s like, the government clearly prints money, it does it all the time, and it clearly borrows. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be having this debt and deficit conversation. So I don’t think there’s anything confusing there.”
This is absolutely priceless. And probably the most frightening clip you’ll ever watch on the people in charge of the US economy.
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) May 3, 2024
Jared Bernstein is literally the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, the main agency advising Biden on economic policypic.twitter.com/1b31FPFPCQ
Wow, that was clear as mud. Bernstein’s incoherence exemplifies Team Biden’s utter lack of business experience and sense. That’s one reason why Biden’s fiscal policy has been so disastrous. Biden saddled Americans with sustained high inflation with no seeming end in sight. Furthermore, Biden’s proposed budget plan contains nothing that would turn the country away from its current negative economic course.
The biggest reason Biden is polling so badly is his poor economic leadership. Americans are hurting, and they want a change. Indeed, they want a return to Donald Trump’s boom years. While journalists always had their hair on fire over the mere sight of him in the White House, the rest of the country enjoyed seeing their economic prospects grow.
