“I want to make it clear I’m going raise some taxes. Many of you are billionaires out there. You’re going to stop paying at 3 percent,” Biden said at an event in Virginia Beach on Tuesday, while also previewing his coming budget plan.
“You’re going to see the people making less than $400,000, as I said from the very beginning, will not pay an additional single penny in any tax,” he added.
Democrats previously sought to repeal pieces of former President Trump’s signature 2017 tax law. But despite holding control of both chambers at the time, efforts to raise the corporate tax rate and the top marginal income tax rate failed after resistance from Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to Biden’s plan.
And with eyes already set on the coming 2024 campaign cycle, some Democrats are wary of investing too much political capital in potential tax hikes that face an even tougher battle in getting past the now GOP-led House.
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), a member of the Finance Committee, said he expects Biden to push for similar proposals seen in the past two years, but he also cast doubt on their chances of passage in the currently divided Congress.
Remarking on previous efforts by Democrats to undo Trump’s tax cuts, Cardin said the party “got as far as I think we could.”
“As far as the effort we made last Congress to undo some of the rates from the 2017 [tax law] we were unsuccessful and we had control of the House. I don’t see us getting very far this year,” he said.
Read more on senators’ positions in the full report at TheHill.com.
