Margaret Thatcher once quipped that the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples' money. The Iron Lady’s maxim is particularly timely as Joe Biden tries to ram through $3.5 trillion in new government spending as part of his Build Back Broke agenda.
Having convinced himself he is the next FDR or LBJ, Biden wants to go on a socialist spending binge so he can, in his words, “fundamentally [change] the structure and the nature of the economy.” And to pay for it, Biden wants to take more of your money. A lot more.
Financing Biden’s $3.5 trillion – but really $5.5 trillion – bankruptcy plan would require the largest tax hike in decades. The corporate tax rate President Trump slashed in order to Make America Competitive Again would revert back to a rate even higher than communist China’s.
Biden’s plan wouldn’t only hit the “trillionaires” he claims are walking around left and right – he’s also selling out the middle class with his tax hikes.
As the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation report makes clear, the bill breaks Biden’s pledge to not raise taxes on those making less than $400,000. In fact, families making just $50,000 would see their taxes go up. So much for middle-class Joe.
To Americans rightly concerned about having to pay more in taxes, Joe Biden says not to worry. Biden believes that because you are the one footing the bill’s multi-trillion dollar price tag, the bill actually costs nothing. Nancy Pelosi echoed Biden’s absurd claim earlier this week.
That’s not just political spin – it’s a flat out lie. It's a lie that insults Americans’ intelligence, and it's one they won't fall for.
The harsh reality is that we can’t afford Biden’s tax hikes, especially now. Biden’s reckless spending has already saddled Americans with the hidden tax they are paying in the form of runaway inflation. Consumers are feeling the pinch of rising prices on everything from groceries to gasoline. Spending trillions and trillions more would only continue to drive down the value of Americans’ paychecks and the money they have in their pockets.
Equally concerning as the astronomical sticker shock price of Biden’s plan is what’s actually in it.
Tucked inside the bill’s nearly 2,500 pages are a plethora of liberal pet projects like tree equity and bias training. Also in there? Subsidies and favors for political friends. Worst of all, policies aimed at turning our free-enterprise system into a European-style, cradle-to-grave welfare state.
If Biden’s plan were to become law, welfare would no longer be tied to work, depriving millions of their chance at achieving the American dream. Upward mobility would become a thing of the past.
Those policies might be music to the ears of progressives like AOC. But they’re a far cry from what Biden promised when he ran as a pragmatic moderate. It’s also not what the American people voted for.
In 2020, Americans elected a split Senate and a narrow Democrat majority in the House. What they didn’t deliver was a mandate for socialism on a scale that makes even Bernie Sanders blush. Biden is trying to enact FDR-sized societal changes without anything resembling an FDR-sized mandate.
That Biden can’t even talk his own party into a plan – which is proving to be increasingly unpopular – just goes to show how bad it really is.
Joe Biden already squandered the economic recovery he inherited from Republican leadership. To ensure we don’t keep digging ourselves into an even deeper hole, Congress must reject Biden’s reckless tax-and-spending spree.