And without that policy, President Biden’s proposed steep capital gains tax rate increases become easier to evade and thus will raise little revenue. Farm-state Democrats were never going to support pairing the existing estate tax with a new capital gains tax on assets passed down at death. Many Democrats also balked at restoring the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world. It is economic malpractice to propose a new global tax system that applies a 15 percent minimum tax rate for multinational companies across the OECD-and a 21 percent minimum tax rate for American multinationals. Instead, these tax-the-rich proposals collapsed because many of them proved to be unworkable, unwise, or (in certain states and Congressional districts) unpopular.
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have shown that left-wing, anti-corporate views can also raise enormous sums of money, and besides, unpopular “pro-corporate” policy views require extra fundraising for ads to repair the reputations of lawmakers who play ball. Nor can this opposition be dismissed as purchased with corporate campaign donations. Numerous other powerful Democratic lawmakers have quietly whittled down the tax package while letting those other two take the heat. Kyrsten Sinema’s Right That America Can’t Afford Dems’ ‘Free’ Trillionsĭespite Biden’s complaint about how his agenda has been held up by “two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends,” the Democratic opposition doesn’t end with Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Now it appears Democrats will be fortunate to squeeze out more than $1 trillion in new taxes. Joe Biden was elected president while promising to add $11 trillion in new spending and $4 trillion in corporate and upper-income taxes over the decade. Instead, basic politics and simple arithmetic won out.
#Snow on the bluff real full#
Now that Democrats have full control of the White House, House, and Senate, they can no longer blame Republicans for blocking these taxes. Less noticed, but perhaps more important, has been the quiet death of the progressives’ bold “tax the rich” utopia.įor years, socialists and progressives such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have enticed voters with free-lunch promises of a European social democracy financed mostly by new taxes on millionaires and large corporations.
The Democratic Party has been tearing itself to pieces debating whether its latest reconciliation bill should spend $3.5 trillion or $2 trillion or even $1.5 trillion. Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images