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After months of false starts and internal divisions, it appears that President Biden and Congressional Democrats are on the verge of agreeing to a spending package to address climate change, childcare, housing, paid family leave and to lower drug costs. The number currently being bandied about is somewhat less than $2 trillion, but what has changed notably is that the original, ambitious plans to pay for that spending with a range of higher taxes on individuals and corporations have been pared back considerably in the face of opposition from Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
Substantial increases in corporate taxes, capital gains taxes and income taxes also may fall by the wayside. That’s a far cry from the relentless drumbeat over the past year of making “the wealth pay their fair share” that has animated much of the Democratic caucus.
But while the situation remains fluid, one thing should have been clear all along: the Democrats should never have bet everything on a massive tax-and-spend bill. They should have from day one focused on the spending, not the taxing.
Why? Because the spending portions of the Build Back Better bill as well as the $1 trillion infrastructure bill already passed by the Senate are widely popular. Why else? Because no one goes to the polls and votes for higher taxes, even for higher taxes on billionaires (OK, maybe some people do vote for that but that may be the exception….). People vote for what they receive or hope to, not for what might be taken from them or from others, however fairly or equitably, in the form of taxes.
In fact, while polls have consistently shown that healthy majorities favor things like a wealth tax on the very rich, when voters actually vote directly on taxes in state-wide elections and referendums, they tend to reject them resoundingly. That shouldn’t be surprising. It’s one thing to favor an abstract tax increase on someone else, especially…
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Source : time
