President Joe Biden on Tuesday vowed to get Democratic votes for a tax hike, which would have a “small to significant” impact on Americans making over $400,000 each year.
“Yes, Anybody making more than $400,000 will see a small to a significant tax increase,” Biden said, when asked by ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos if he would raise taxes on higher earners who benefited from former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts.
“If you make less than $400,000, you won’t see one single penny in additional federal tax,” he added.
When asked if he would get any Republican support for his tax plan, Biden replied that he “may not get it.”
“But I'll get the Democratic votes for a tax increase,” the president said. “If we just took the tax rate back to what it was when [George W.] Bush was president—the top rate paid 39.6 percent in federal taxes—that would raise $230 billion. Yet they’re complaining because I’m providing a tax credit for child care, for the poor, for the middle class?”
Biden’s proposed tax hikes will likely be a part of in an anticipated $4 trillion infrastructure bill, which has already received push back from Senate Republicans, who expect Democrats to craft the bill with reconciliation—the budget process that would let it bypass the 60-vote legislative filibuster. Under the current Senate rules, a proposed legislation usually requires the support of at least 60 senators to move forward, meaning that at least 10 Republicans need to support a Democratic bill for it to pass.
“I think the Trojan horse will be called infrastructure. But inside the Trojan horse will be all the tax increases that Sen. [Rick] Scott and others have been talking about,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday at a press conference.
McConnell said he predicted that Democrats will use budget reconciliation again. Last week, they used reconciliation for the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package, which cleared the Senate with zero Republican support.
“They have one more of those available to them, and my suspicion is they will try to jam everything they can into that bill and call it an infrastructure bill,” McConnell said. “I fully expect that’s what they’ll try to do, and that’s because I don’t think there’s going to be any enthusiasm on our side for a tax increase.”
