President Joe Biden proposed raising taxes on the nation’s job creators to help shrink the government’s ballooning budget deficit during his State of The Union address Thursday night.
While claiming to have cut the federal budget deficit by more than $1 trillion despite vastly increased spending under his administration, Biden said corporations and the wealthy should pay more to cut the deficit further.
“It’s my goal to cut the federal deficit another $3 trillion by making big corporations and the very wealthy finally beginning to pay their fair share,” he said.
Biden proposed raising the minimum corporate tax rate from 15% to 21%. Though unspoken in his Thursday night address, Biden also will propose a 33% increase in the overall corporate tax rate, increasing it from 21% to 28%, according to a White House media briefing held earlier Wednesday.
In addition, the president said billionaires should pay a minimum 25% personal income tax.
“That would raise $500 billion over the next 10 years,” he said.
Nobody who earns less than $400,000 a year will see a tax increase under his plan, he said.
“Making the wealthy pay their fair share” was repeated messaging during the speech.
Congressional Republicans jeered at the prospect of tax increases on the nation’s job creators as some economists warn of a looming recession.
Biden’s call for business tax increases to reduce the budget deficit comes less than a month after two federal watchdog reports said the federal government remains on an “unsustainable long-term fiscal path.”
“The federal government faces an unsustainable long-term fiscal path,” according to the U.S Government Accountability Office report. “We project that debt held by the public as a share of the economy will more than double over the next 30 years and will grow faster than the economy over the long term if current revenue and spending policies are not changed.”
The Congressional Budget Office had similar findings in its “Budget and Economic Outlook” report published last month.
U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro said that “both spending and revenue issues need to be addressed as part of a comprehensive long-term plan.”
Biden did not propose cutting any government spending programs during his address.
The U.S. national debt stood at nearly $34.5 trillion as Biden delivered the State of the Union Thursday.
Federal spending has increased dramatically under Biden, which led to elevated inflation of 17%, including significantly higher costs for everything from groceries, to gasoline and most other consumer goods during his term.
“Inflation under Biden is killing America!” former President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social. Trump, who is likely to face Biden in November in a rematch of 2020, reacted on Truth Social throughout Biden’s speech.
A Bank of America investment strategist recently noted that the federal government began adding $1 trillion worth of debt about every 100 days or so beginning last June, as The Center Square previously reported.
During Biden’s first three years in office, the national debt has ballooned by more than $6 trillion.
“Interest costs [on debt] have more than doubled in just the past three years, rising to more than $2 billion per day this year,” Michael Peterson, CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, said last month. “And by next year, we’ll spend more on interest than on defense and nearly all other national priorities.”
Last November, Moody’s Investors Service lowered the U.S. federal government’s credit ratings from “stable” to “negative,” citing the national debt and growing budget deficit.
