President Biden finally released his budget on Thursday, more than a month after the Budget Act’s statutory deadline. The document should have come with a five-word warning attached: “Hold on to your wallet.”
The budget includes thousands of pages of arcana and technical details, all of which will come to light further in the coming days. But a preliminary review of the budget’s main summary tables illustrates a familiar pattern among Democrats — a tax, spend, and borrow vision designed to expand government further. Here are some of the “highlights” (more like lowlights) from the summary document.
Taxes Too Much
Overall, the administration says the budget proposes $4.7 trillion in tax increases — a staggering sum in any season, but particularly when the economy faces recession risks. Among the highest profile revenue hikes:
$437 billion from “a minimum income tax on the wealthiest taxpayers” $493 billion from changes to the “global minimum tax regime” $238 billion from increasing the tax on stock buybacks $344 billion from increasing the rate of said Medicare tax from 3.8 percent to 5 percent for those earning over $400,000 $1.3 trillion from increasing the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent $200 billion from other “reforms” to business taxation $549 billion from adopting the undertaxed profits rule regarding international taxes $66 billion from “reform[ing] taxation of foreign fossil fuel income” $37 billion from “modify[ing] energy taxes”
