The Patriot Post® · The Democrats Are Coming for Your Wallets

Joe Biden has been desperate to change the subject of late, but this might not be what he had in mind. The Democrat-controlled House Ways and Means Committee finally put forth the awful truth about Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan — which of course neither builds nor betters any good thing.

That awful truth is that your taxes are about to go up. And not just yours, Mr. Richy Rich. No, no, we’re looking at you, too, Mr. Middle Income.

“On Tuesday, we will continue our work on the Build Back Better Act,” said Massachusetts Democrat Richard Neal, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, “with the consideration of investments to provide critical support to families, spur the development of clean energy, reinstate Build America Bonds, and improve Americans’ ability to afford health care.”

With the consideration of investments, eh? If we didn’t know better, we’d swear “investments” were just a euphemism for “spending.” And how do they plan to pay for this wish list that adds up to an appalling $3.5 trillion? As our Thomas Gallatin wrote: “The obvious answer is that they don’t. Deficit spending was already over $3 trillion last year alone, and it’s another $2.3 trillion this year. The cumulative federal debt approaches $29 trillion. Democrats do, however, plan to erect a facade of responsibility by raising taxes. Of course, talk of raising taxes is never popular, so Democrats run their usual ‘tax the rich’ class warfare tactic — complete with expensive galas and dresses — even as they’re looking to levee one of the biggest tax hikes on Americans since 1968.”

To the Democrats’ credit, they want to at least give us the appearance of fiscal sanity. But that means foisting upon us the largest tax increase in more than half a century.

The tax bill itself is an 880-page obscenity with more than $2 trillion in tax increases — more than four times the amount of the job-killing, economy-stagnating ObamaCare tax increase of a decade ago. So far, the bill includes 40 new taxes, and, as National Review’s Rich Lowry notes, “The individual tax rate would increase from 37 percent to 39.6 percent, the capital-gains rate from 20 percent to 25 percent, and the corporate-tax rate from 21 percent to 26.5 percent, among sundry other provisions befitting the hideously complex U.S. tax regime.”

The bill would also increase the onerous capital gains tax from 20% to 25%, and it’ll target married couples by ensuring that the tax hikes hit them at lower thresholds than comparable individual earners.

Further, the bill proposes to raise the corporate tax rate to 26.5%, well above the European average of around 20%, and above the 25% rate of communist China. This will make our nation’s business climate less attractive and less competitive, and the brunt of it will be borne, as it always is, by wage earners rather than the Democrats’ ostensible targets, which are the CEOs and the shareholders.

Remember when Joe Biden pledged not to increase taxes on any couple making less than $400,000 per year? Well, he lied. As The Daily Signal reports: “The official scorekeepers at the Joint Committee on Taxation show that the Build Back Better Act would in fact raise taxes on middle-income Americans. Under the proposal, taxes would go up for families bringing home $50,000 or more per year, far below what Biden promised.”

Of course, Biden and his fellow Democrats will stress that they’re targeting “The Rich,” and that’s certainly true to an extent. No one knows how big our tax code is these days, but we do know that it’s already extremely progressive. In 2018, for example, the top 1% of earners brought home 21% of income and paid 40% of all federal income taxes, while the bottom 50% paid just 3% of taxes.

But “The Rich” and “Big Business” don’t have enough money to fund the Democrats’ statist dreams. There simply aren’t enough of them. Only the massive middle class has that kind of capital. So hang onto your wallets, folks, because the Democrats are coming for them.

Where’s a good Tea Party revolt when we need one?