TCJA | GeorgMedia

August 11, 2021

Biden slams Trump for racking up $8 trillion in debt as he vows Democrats will pay for their spending plan by taxing the rich

Biden slammed Trump’s tax cuts for racking up debt during remarks promoting his economic agenda.
He said his plans will be fully paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
The infrastructure and reconciliation bills are both headed to the House for approval.
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After months of negotiations, the Senate passed President Joe Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill on Tuesday. A day later, the president made sure Americans knew his economic agenda would represent a sharp break from President Donald Trump.

“This isn’t going to be anything like my predecessor, whose unpaid tax cuts and other spending added nearly $8 trillion in his four years to the national debt,” Biden said during remarks on Wednesday. “$8 trillion.”

-The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 11, 2021

The passage of the infrastructure plan through the Senate was a major achievement for Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, and during his remarks, he touted the plans for creating jobs and boosting economic growth, among other things. He also used this achievement to criticize the debt that came from Trump’s tax cuts, saying that Trump didn’t even attempt to pay for them.

According to Federal Reserve data, the national debt rose by almost $7.8 trillion during Trump’s time in office. During his time in office, Republicans approved a major corporate tax cut that added $2 trillion to the national debt, a measure many Democrats and economists say favored the wealthiest Americans.

During Trump’s tenure, Democrats and Republicans also struck some spending deals to fund the government, while $3 trillion was added to the national debt specifically to combat the COVID-19 pandemic with stimulus packages that provided small business aid, enhanced unemployment insurance, and direct payments. Economists largely viewed that spending as critical to keeping people and businesses afloat during the national crisis.

Biden vowed he would do things differently and would pay for his major spending proposals by hiking taxes on the rich.

“The investments I’m proposing would be fully paid for over the long term by having the largest corporations … and the super-wealthy begin to pay their fair share,” Biden said.

Biden has remained committed to raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations to level the playing field for the middle class. When he first introduced his infrastructure proposals, he wanted to fund them with a corporate tax hike to 28%, still only a partial reversal of Trump’s 2017 corporate tax cut. He said at the time that he was “sick and tired of ordinary people being fleeced.”

Republicans have strictly opposed raising taxes on the rich, but Senate Democrats are attempting to do that with their $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, which can be passed without any Republican votes.

Both the infrastructure and reconciliation bills are headed to the House for approval, marking wins for Democrats in advancing Biden’s economic plans.

“We brought this economy back from a cold start,” Biden said. “And there is going ot be some ups and down. But I am committed to making sure our historic economic recovery reaches everyone.”

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April 28, 2021

Nancy Pelosi slams GOP ‘tax scam’ of 2017 in defending Biden’s wealthy tax hike

Nancy Pelosi defended the proposed tax hikes to fund Biden’s $4 trillion infrastructure plans.
She told MSNBC the hikes are a response to the GOP “tax scam” of 2017, which benefited the wealthy.
GOP lawmakers have strongly opposed the hikes, calling them part of a “socialist vision” for the country.
See more stories on Insider’s business page.

Ahead of President Joe Biden’s unveiling of his $1.8 trillion infrastructure plan on Wednesday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi spoke out in defense of the president’s tax increase proposals to fund the plan.

Pelosi joined MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday afternoon to talk about Biden’s progress since he took office, and she was quick to defend the tax hikes to fund his infrastructure plan, which Republicans have strongly opposed.

She said Biden’s tax hikes are in response to the Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts.

“We’re on a better path for the people,” Pelosi told MSNBC. “What he [Biden] is talking about is exactly just to reverse some of what the Republicans did in their tax scam where they added almost $2 trillion to the national debt, if you include the cost and the interest on the debt, to give tax breaks to the top, top, wealthiest people in the country.”

Pelosi also said that Biden’s plan, which includes funding for universal pre-K and free community college, is “transformative” and works to directly aid Americans.

Pelosi was referring to former President Donald Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which gave higher-income households larger average tax cuts than lower-income households. This plan was criticized at the time by Democrats who argued that the wealthy should pay their fair share in taxes, and prompted legislation from lawmakers like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who recently introduced an ultramillionare tax on the wealthiest Americans.

Biden originally proposed a corporate tax hike from 21% to 28% to fund his infrastructure plan, but has since expressed willingness to negotiate on the size and scope of the plan to get Republicans on board. The international average is around 25%, a rate with which Biden would reportedly be comfortable. The 2017 tax cut slashed the rate down from 35%, although American corporations have contributed a lower percentage to GDP than the international average for two decades, per JPMorgan research.

“I am prepared to compromise, prepared to see what we can do and what we can get together on,” Biden said at a bipartisan infrastructure meeting last week. “It’s a big package, but there are a lot of needs.”

But even so, Republicans would rather see a plan funded without any form of an income or corporate tax increase. A group of Republicans introduced a counter-proposal to Biden’s infrastructure plan which would cost between $600 billion and $800 billion, and would be funded by user-fees, like a gas tax, instead of tax hikes.

Senate Minority Whip John Thune tweeted on Tuesday that Biden’s proposed tax hikes are part of a “socialist vision” for the country, repeating the Republican Party’s now-familiar playbook to label any Democratic policy proposal as socialist.

In separate remarks in Congress today, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell reiterated his opposition to Biden’s infrastructure plans, calling them “another multitrillion-dollar smorgasbord of liberal social engineering.”

Polls show American voters overwhelmingly like the things Republicans would like to strip out of Biden’s first infrastructure plan, and support raising corporate taxes to pay for them.

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March 31, 2021

82 unions and liberal groups urge Biden to go bigger on tax hikes and hold the wealthy accountable

82 liberal groups urged Biden to go bigger on tax hikes and hold the wealthy accountable.
They cited Biden’s campaign proposals of reversing Trump’s tax cuts and investing in IRS enforcement.
Despite GOP opposition in Congress, the majority of Republican voters support tax increases.
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President Joe Biden is unveiling the first part of his multitrillion-dollar infrastructure proposal today, which could include up to $3.5 trillion in tax hikes. Some unions and progressive organizations are saying he should go even bigger.

On Tuesday, 81 national organizations, led by Americans for Tax Fairness, sent a letter to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, commending the administration’s efforts to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and encouraging the president to go further. The letter said Biden’s tax plans were the “boldest of any major party presidential nominee in modern American history.”

The tax proposals have “received widespread media coverage and, perhaps more significant, your boldly progressive tax plan was heavily attacked by your political opponents, who spent untold millions of dollars and claimed falsely that the middle-class would pay more,” the letter said. “Yet, you won the most votes ever of any US presidential candidate, with a central promise of your campaign to make the rich and corporations pay their fair share of taxes. You have a clear mandate to pursue your agenda.”

The letter, which was signed by AFL-CIO and MoveOn, said that even among Republicans, raising taxes is popular. For example, a New York Times survey from November found that two-thirds of respondents, including 45% of Republican voters, supported tax increases on people making over $400,000, and an Americans for Tax Fairness survey from October found that 71% of Americans supported raising the income tax rate, including 51% of Republicans.

The best way to hold the wealthy accountable, according to the letter, is to reverse the “worst aspects” of former President Donald Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), including Biden’s proposals to:

Lift the corporate tax rate to 28% from the current 21%;
Restore the estate tax to its 2009 levels, meaning that still only the richest 0.59% of estates would get taxed;
And return the top marginal tax rate on the highest incomes to 39.6%, from the current 37%.

Aside from the TCJA proposed changes, Biden also proposed additional tax reforms during his campaign, like investing in Internal Revenue Service enforcement of high-income taxpayers and imposing a “financial-risk fee” on large Wall Street banks.

The letter said that even along with Biden’s campaign proposals, he could implement many other reforms, including a 10-percentage-point surtax on all incomes about $2 million, a financial transaction tax on bond and stock trades, and a wealth tax on ultra-millionaires.

Biden’s tax hikes have already faced opposition in Congress. While moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said an infrastructure proposal could be as large as $4 trillion using tax hikes as funding, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned that won’t win his party’s support.

“I don’t think there’s going to be any enthusiasm on our side for a tax increase,” McConnell told reporters last week. Republicans even recently introduced a bill to repeal the estate tax, which would only affect 0.6% of farm estates.

But progressive lawmakers are continuing to push for measures that hold the ultra-rich accountable. Although Politico reported on Tuesday that Biden will not use a wealth tax to fund infrastructure, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has led the effort to propose a 2% tax on households with net worths over $50 million.

“A wealth tax is critical for raising revenue, and that revenue is critical for raising opportunity,” Warren said on Twitter on March 1. “We build a future for all of our kids by investing in opportunity. This is one way we can make this government work for everyone – not just the rich and powerful.”

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