While far-right Republicans continue threatening to blow up the global economy unless Congress makes cuts to popular social programs, progressive taxation experts are celebrating U.S. President Joe Biden’s latest push to invest in “widespread prosperity” by raising taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations.
As part of his fiscal year 2024 budget blueprint unveiled Thursday, Biden calls for a 25% minimum tax on the wealthiest 0.01%; reforms to ensure high-income individuals pay their fair share into the Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund; and repealing 2017 tax cuts and restoring the top tax rate of 39.6% for people making over $400,000 a year.
Along with pushing for raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% — which is still far below the 35% rate that was in place prior to Republicans’ 2017 tax overhaul — the president advocates expanding the child tax credit while eliminating tax subsidies for cryptocurrency transactions, fossil fuel companies, and real estate.
Biden also “proposes to reform the international tax system to reduce the incentives to book profits in low-tax jurisdictions, stop corporate inversions to tax havens, and raise the tax rate on U.S. multinationals’ foreign earnings from 10.5% to 21%,” according to a White House fact sheet.
Although many of these proposals are unlikely to go anywhere due to the GOP-controlled U.S. House and divided Senate, Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens said Friday that “it’s great to see President Biden leading the charge to increase taxes on billionaires, crack down on stock buybacks by massive corporations, and prevent the wealthiest Americans from cheating on their taxes and avoiding paying what they owe.”
“The tax policies laid out in this budget are fair, popular, and long overdue,” she declared. “The next time someone claims that we can’t afford to protect Social Security and Medicare for future generations — or that we need to cut popular investments in education, healthcare, housing, or clean energy — show them President Bident’s latest budget proposal and ask them why they care so much about protecting the ultrawealthy from paying their fair share.”
According to Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy executive director Amy Hanauer, “President Biden’s budget proposal presents a bold vision for what tax justice should look like in America.”
“The provisions would raise substantial revenue, fund important priorities, and increase tax fairness,” she stressed. “The revenue raisers are laser-focused on taxing very wealthy individuals and corporations, and the budget would reduce the deficit while easing costs for American families, particularly for middle and low-income parents.”
Americans for Tax Fairness executive director Frank Clemente asserted Thursday that “President Biden’s budget plainly shows whose side he’s on: working families struggling with the high cost of healthcare, childcare, housing and more — not the wealthy elite and their big corporations rolling in dough and dodging their fair share of taxes.”
“Republicans have already made clear they’re on the side of the 1 Percenters and big corporations by trying to shield rich tax cheats and endangering Social Security and Medicare with deficit-busting tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations,” Clemente added. “The contrast couldn’t be sharper.”
As Common Dreams reported earlier Friday, the House Freedom Caucus said its 45 members would “consider voting” to raise the U.S. debt limit if their colleagues in Congress abandon some of Biden’s key economic priorities, slash hundreds of billions of dollars in social spending, and restrict federal agencies’ future budgets.
Responding on Twitter, Biden said that “extreme MAGA House Republicans are showing us what they value: tax breaks for the rich.”
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.