“Read my lips, no new taxes.”
That one line, nearly single-handedly, turned George H.W. Bush into a one-term President.
Now, President Joe Biden might want to keep that bit of history in mind as he just broke a top campaign promise he made to middle-class voters.
Millionaires and Billionaires paying their fair share?
During the 2020 Presidential campaign, then-candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris promised over 50-times they would never raise taxes on any American making less than $400,000 per year.
Instead, they talked about “millionaires and billionaires paying their fair share,” – well never mentioning what that “fair share” would entail.
However, Democrats – thanks to a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Kamala Harris – finally gave President Joe Biden the “Build Back Better” bill he’s been pushing for since his first day in office.
Building back broke
The bill, which Republicans have labeled “Build Back Broke,” was slightly tweaked and renamed the, “Inflation Reduction Act.”
The legislation has hundreds of billions of dollars in spending to combat so-called “Climate Change,” adds on to Medicare, and increases the IRS budget by about seven-times.
Analysis from economic institutes which have graded the bill range from saying it will either do little to nothing to reduce inflation, or actually make inflation worse.
Meanwhile, Democrats claim by taxing the rich and closing tax loopholes, the bill will also bring in enough revenue to reduce the federal deficit by more than $300 Billion.
However, according to the Congressional Budget Office, that estimate only works if Congress allows ObamaCare tax provisions to sunset – which is highly unlikely.
A promise broken
When we pass the Inflation Reduction Act, not a single American in the middle class will pay higher taxes.
It’s that simple.
— President Biden (@POTUS) August 4, 2022
Additionally, the claims from the Left that only “millionaires and billionaires” will face new taxes has also been debunked.
According to analysis by the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, nearly all Americans would see increased taxes by 2023.
In fact, federal taxes will increase by $1.9 billion on those earning between $50,000 and $75,000 and by $10.8 billion on those earning between $100,000 and $200,000 in 2023.
Overall average tax rates would increase from 20.3% to 20.6% in 2023 alone, according to the analysis.
That’s a far cry from simply a corporate tax floor of 15% as Democrats like Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia are trying to sell the American public ahead of the 2022 Midterm elections.
Preston Brashers, a senior tax policy analyst at the right-leaning Heritage Foundation, explains that when taxing corporations, those businesses don’t simply acquiesce to making less money.
“A brand can’t pay a tax,” he said. “Technically, legally, the corporations are the ones paying taxes, but ultimately that has to be paid by people, one way or the other, Brashers explained. “It’s not like Jeff Bezos—if you tax Amazon—that this is coming out of Jeff Bezos’s pocket. It’s coming out of everyone’s pocket that’s involved in that operation, whether you’re a worker, if you buy the products, if you have any stock in the companies, if you have a 401(k).”
As for Biden, Schumer and Manchin’s claims that “Build Back Broke” will only impact Americans making more than $400,000:
“There’s no way to take . . . [Democrats’] claim about $400,000 seriously,” Brashers said. “You can quibble with details, but there’s simply no way you can say that these taxes are being exclusively paid by people making $400,000 [or more].”
