President Biden revealed in March his plan for America’s fiscal future in his 2024 presidential budget. In it, he outlines a broad policy agenda, including a plan to raise the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent and levy a litany of taxes on high-income earners.
Yet, his proposal would do nothing to address the country’s national debt crisis. Biden plans to increase spending by $1.1 trillion, a large proportion of which would be for non-military discretionary items like expanding the federal child tax credits, tuition reduction, clean energy infrastructure, and biomedical and environmental research.
When first proposed, raising the corporate tax rate was estimated to cut America’s Gross Domestic Product by $720 billion over 10 years. It would also reduce workers’ wages and full-time employment opportunities.
While the president appears focused on increasing the tax burden on wealthy Americans, he should be concerned with prioritizing policies that elevate Americans’ purchasing power and doing so as quickly as humanly possible.
Raising corporate taxes will drive high-income workers to low-tax jurisdictions, pushing consumer prices up. It is well documented that when the government seeks to discourage a behavior, it chooses to tax it. Taxing U.S. investments signals to investors that their financial backing is not wanted. Meanwhile, those who cannot bankroll economies abroad are left to do more with less.
But most important, these changes signal higher consumer prices through reduced investment in American business.
Consumers are struggling. A January 2024 poll reveals that 31 percent of Americans rate national economic conditions as “poor” while 41 percent rate them as “only fair.” The same poll also reveals that 72 percent of Americans are “very concerned” about the price of food and consumer goods.
These attitudes are reflected in economic reality. In the past year, there has been a 2.2 percent increase in food costs and a 3.6 percent increase in electricity prices, while hourly earnings are up only 1.1 percent. In fact, Stephen Miran, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a former senior adviser for the Treasury, stated that “inflation-adjusted wages shrunk by 3.7 percent since the end of 2022.”
The president and his economic advisers likely saw a political opportunity to present a budget that caved to the worst impulses of economic populism before the November 2024 election. It is easy to see this plan as more political rhetoric than any genuine attempt at a policy prescription about America’s fiscal future.
Fortunately, Congress almost never follows the president’s budget. It does, however, signal another missed opportunity for the administration to spread confidence in the economy and unleash the full, unrivaled economic potential of private enterprise in America.
Reprinted with permission from DC Journal by Ben Dennehy.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
The planned Socialist agenda continues to eliminate the Middle Class where is only the controlling Elite class and the rest (all poor) exist. This is the way of the Western Roman Empire found its demise in history. This nation continues to follow this path of destruction. History always repeats itself as no one learns from its mistakes to make a correction.
For this administration to “unleash the full, unrivaled economic potential of private enterprise in America”, they’d have to understand how it works. Most members of this administration are career politicians, and they get paid out of our hard-earned tax dollars. They don’t know what it’s like to own a business or to be a loyal and productive employee of a private company. Dollars come easily to them, unless they’re voted out of their position. And its time we did just that. MAGA!
Biden has it all wrong. When addressing the free marketplace and speaking about high inflation, he says and Obama used to say, “Just lower your prices”. That means they have no clue how products are priced. Comparing the 2023 and 2024 catalogs of one of my seed suppliers, I see that prices for most items increased 5-60% in one year. 60%!! So, what am I supposed to do, Joe? Keep my retail prices the same?! Or lower them?! No. Instead, I’m raising my prices this year because I need a better return for my effort. When I apologize to some of my customers, they fully understand, and would rather keep me around than see me stop working. If I gave up my horticultural business, the government would get even less money. Pay attention, Joe. You’re ruining the country.
Increasing taxes only increases the burden on private enterprise. As things get worse, we’ll see massive layoffs, lower productivity, and maybe a stock market that reflects what’s really going on. Biden can pull rabbits out of a hat (student debt forgiveness, climate change garbage, free this, free that), but eventually he’ll run out of rabbits. Even common sense democrats are seeing this.
Dictator Beijing biden began his anti-consumer plan on his first day Illegally and Unconstitutionally from Election Fraud in the WH when he KILLED the Keystone Pipeline and started RAISING TAXES the same day while shutting down the country for 2 years when the CDC told him as soon as he was in that there was NO REASON to shut down the country that we had already reached IMMUNITY from the China Virus (FACT).
I bought gas for my motorcycle with a 6-gallon tank on it… cost $28.50 @ $4.75/gallon… 87 octane yet. Don’t whisper “it’s working” to me, Brandon.
Another comment “Awaiting for approval”!! Good grief, AMAC.
Biden blames Trump for inflation, however he’s not truthful. He’s the problem. He says he’s helping the senior citizens, however, groceries shopping, I notice the seniors shopping carts aren’t as full in the past, I talked to one of the people at the supermarket, I noticed that they have a ll kinds of food on sale, she said we’re trying to get customers to buy more however they don’t have the money to buy more..
“Biden’s budget.” Yeah, right. It’d be safer turning over the nuclear football to a roomful of romper roomers. Not one single solitary thing this idiot (Biden) and his cabinet clowns haven’t touched that’s not been completely laid to waste.