With another fiscal year over, it’s time for the White House to develop budget plans for 2023. On Monday, those plans were announced by Democratic President Joe Biden. Unsurprisingly, he is making a bevy of changes, including getting rid of his predecessor’s triumphant tax cuts.
According to him and just about any other Democrat you speak to, the tax cuts imposed by then-President Donald Trump did nothing but cost the US more money and sink our deficit spending even further into despair.
Naturally, during his speech on Monday, Biden even said as much, claiming that “The Trump tax cuts added $2 trillion in deficit spending and largely helped the rich and largest corporations.”
Essentially, as far as Biden is concerned, they didn’t work to achieve their primary goal, which of course, was to increase federal revenue to help pay off some of that deficit and pay for any federal spending that needed to be done.
However, just a few moments later, Biden, in effect, took back this claim and admitted that the tax cuts are indeed working, without, of course, giving any credit to Trump.
He said, “We have generated a GDP growth of 5.7 percent, the best economic growth we’ve seen in this country in over 40 years. This has led to a substantial increase in government revenues and dramatically improved our fiscal situation.”
And while Biden tends to fib a bit, this is not one of those times.
As the records show, in 2017, prior to Trump implementing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the government brought in $3.3 trillion in revenue. In 2021, despite still being in recovery from the pandemic and its shutdowns, the federal government brought in a whopping $4 trillion. And so far, for 2022, they are set to receive well over $4.5 trillion.
What Biden was fibbing about is how much those tax cuts added to the federal deficit. As the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler wrote, Trump’s budget would have “an estimated revenue loss of a little under $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. So Biden is rounding up here.”
In addition, Kessler pointed out that while any plan like this would increase the deficit, the Democrats’ criticism fails to consider the economic growth it also creates. And he isn’t the only one to note this.
As he says, even the liberal Tax Policy Center found that some 80.4 percent of all taxpayers received a tax cut under Trump. Only 5 percent saw an increase in taxes. More specifically, about 91 percent of taxpayers would get a tax cut in the middle tax bracket, which averaged about $1,090. A mere 7.3 percent would see a tax increase.
Kessler explained that this is because Trump’s plan limits the amount of state taxes paid that could be taken out of the federal tax bill. Before Trump’s agenda, those in only the top tax brackets and high tax states saw the same kind of benefits.
Additionally, a near doubling of the standard deduction, a doubling of the child tax credit, and a lowering of tax rates overall allowed most American taxpayers to get a tax cut averaging $1,000.
Of course, Biden sees those benefits and makes them out to be his doing.
Remember how he boasted about how “we” generated a higher GDP than had been seen in over 40 years? By “we,” he insinuates that he somehow had a part in those economic successes.
But when we actually look at the numbers, we see a vastly different story.
You know, like how because of Trump’s tax cuts, before COVID, America saw the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years, as well as the highest number of those employed ever, a whopping 160 million. The last time we saw numbers like that was when Ronald Reagan was president, and he, similarly imposed tax cuts that increased American wealth and prosperity overall.
Now, post-COVID, we are starting to see those numbers rise again and massive economic gains on the federal level. At least that’s as long as Trump’s plan stays intact and Biden isn’t allowed to go through his huge 2023 budget plan of spending some $5.8 trillion.
Even the Wall Street Journal has said that this, along with the proposed tax increases by Biden, is “the last thing that taxpayers or the economy needs.”
