Deroy Murdock: Biden's $3.5T spending spree shows a 7-year-old's take on math
Only in the mind of Joe Biden does $3.5 trillion minus $2.3 trillion equal $0
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}President Biden, 78, has a 7-year-old’s grasp of basic math.
"My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars," Biden claimed via Twitter on September 25. Regarding this multi-trillion-dollar budget, he added: "And it adds zero dollars to the national debt."
One can imagine a second-grader named Joey Biden showing off his new train set and telling his playmates, "My daddy bought it for me at Woolworth’s. So, it didn’t cost anything."
That’s cute enough to make a coal miner cry. But in a commander in-chief who turns 79 on November 20, such "thinking" should bring America to tears.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Biden’s Build Back Better Act originally cost $3.5 trillion, or an average $24,424 for each of America’s 143.3 million taxpayers. The House Budget Committee’s version of this socialist extravaganza weighs in at $4.3 trillion. That’s 23 percent more expensive and even further Left. Somehow, Biden argues that all of this costs "zero."
Perhaps Biden believes that if he and his fellow Democrats can shake down taxpayers for either $3.5 trillion or $4.3 trillion, then this massive dump of jumped-up welfare spending and shiny new entitlements will total "zero." Never mind the thousands of billions of dollars vacuumed into the U.S. Treasury via the Internal Revenue Service.
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But even this "zero" is absurdly meaningless. As massive as are these tax hikes, they thankfully are not massive enough to cover this staggeringly high new spending. The House Ways & Means Committee’s 2,465-page text proposes a mere $2.3 trillion in tax increases to underwrite this Democrat cornucopia. Of course, this falls short of even the original price tag.
Only in the mind of Joe Biden does $3.5 trillion minus $2.3 trillion equal $0. Biden also must think that $10,000 = $400,000.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}At least 42 times, Americans for Tax Reform reports, Biden publicly pledged these or equivalent words: "I promise you, you have my word, if you make less than $400,000 a year, you won’t pay a penny more in taxes."
Since multiplication and division escape most 7-year-olds, Biden might be forgiven for confusing $400,000 for the far lower income levels on which he itches to hike taxes.
The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) announced on September 22 that Biden’s blueprint would raise taxes on:
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}•4.7 percent of those earning between $40,000 and $50,000
•8.8 percent between $50,000 and $75,000
•17.9 percent between $75,000 and $100,000
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}•34.8 percent between $100,000 and $200,000
Economists understand that the working class will pay much of Biden’s $858 billion corporate-tax-rate increase -- from 21 percent to 28 percent of profits. Companies will finance these higher taxes by raising prices (inflation!), firing workers, and slashing or slowing compensation on the survivors.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Literature suggests that 25 percent of the burden of the corporate tax may be borne by labor in terms of diminished wage growth," JCT Chief of Staff Thomas A. Barthold told the House Ways & Means Committee on September 14.
Who would get this potential $214.5 bill? Barthold said: "Labor. Laborers."
Middle-class Americans will pay more for fuel, thanks to some $60 billion in higher energy taxes.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}And, astonishingly, Biden’s budget hikes taxes on those earning less than $10,000. In 2023 alone, a proposed tobacco-excise-tax boost would smoke $408 million out of this cohort.
Love or hate tobacco, Biden would fleece these vulnerable Americans, obliterating his oft-repeated promise. Perhaps he believes that the idle rich include individuals living $2,880 beneath the poverty line.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Biden also has a tot’s grip on what constitutes a "fair share" of income taxes. Like a second grader, he sees wealthy people and screams insults.
As Biden said on September 16, if his plan is enacted, "the super-wealthy...can finally begin to pay their fair share of what they owe."
Heritage Foundation
But even a Cub Scout could use IRS statistics to refute Biden’s remarks. The latest data show that in 2018, the top 1 percent of taxpayers earned at least $540,000 each. This group scored 21 percent of all national income and paid 40 percent of all federal income taxes.
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That’s right: Forty cents of every tax dollar that landed in the U.S. Treasury got there, thanks to the industriousness of the reviled 1 percent.
Meanwhile, everyone in the top 10 percent earned at least $152,000, made 48 percent of national income, and paid 60 percent of income taxes.
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And the bottom 50 percent? They earned less than $43,600 each, made 12 percent of national income, and paid a measly 3 percent of income taxes.
Only a 7-year-old could inspect those numbers and claim without laughing that the top 1 percent do not pay their fair share. And if grabbing 40 cents of each tax dollar from the 1 percent is unfair, then how many more cents would fix that?
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}But as childlike as is Biden’s mathematical prowess, he is an integral calculus professor beside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.. Evidently, she never learned to count.
Concerning Biden’s budget, Pelosi told ABC’s This Week: "Let’s not talk about numbers and dollars. Let’s talk about values."