President Joe Biden has repeatedly stated his intention, if he’s re-elected, to allow the tax cuts passed by the Republican Congress in 2017 under former President Donald Trump to expire.
“Donald Trump was very proud of his $2 trillion tax cut that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and biggest corporations and exploded the federal debt,” Biden posted on social media last week.
“That tax cut is going to expire. If I’m re-elected, it’s going to stay expired,” he added.
Donald Trump was very proud of his $2 trillion tax cut that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and biggest corporations and exploded the federal debt.
That tax cut is going to expire.
If I’m reelected, it’s going to stay expired.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) April 23, 2024
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Other than the expiration date, pretty much everything Biden wrote about the Trump tax cuts is false.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act lowered individual income tax rates across the board, and brought down the tax burden on businesses, large and small.
Biden goes on a tirade against President Trump’s successful tax cuts (which LOWERED taxes for every income bracket): “It’s gonna expire, and if I’m re-elected, it’s gonna stay expired!”
REMINDER: Biden is currently proposing the largest tax hike in U.S. history. pic.twitter.com/LEj3BIvgrp
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 19, 2024
Among other benefits that particularly helped lower- and middle-income Americans, the legislation nearly doubled the standard deduction and increased the Child Tax Credit from $1,000 to $2,000 per child.
The standard deduction is the amount you can make before owing any federal income tax. For a single tax filer, that threshold is $13,850 in 2023 and for a married couple filing jointly, it is $27,700
If the Trump tax cuts expire, the standard deduction will drop back to about half the current amount, while the Child Tax Credit will revert back to $1,000 per child.
The nonpartisan Tax Foundation has calculated the result of all the tax benefits expiring will be a $1,707 increase in taxes for a single filer earning $75,000 per year and a $1,661 increase for married couple with two children earning $85,000.
Biden promised to cancel the Trump Tax Cuts if re-elected—it would crush working Americans.
— Single earning $75K/yr: +$1,707
— Families with 2 kids earning $85K/yr: +$1,661
— Families with 2 kids earning $165K/yr: +$2,450
— Families with 3 kids earning $200K/yr: +$7,449 pic.twitter.com/BWXq5TJKhV
— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) April 29, 2024
A “Fact-Checker” column published by The Washington Post in 2019 rated as “false” then-Democratic presidential contender Biden’s claim that no one but the rich benefitted from the Trump tax cuts. “Fact-Checker” Glenn Kessler, in fact, awarded Biden the column’s worst rating of “Four Pinocchios”
Kessler cited an analysis by the liberal Tax Policy Center, which determined before the law’s passage that “that 80.4 percent of all taxpayers would have a tax cut, compared with about 5 percent experiencing a tax increase. In the middle quintile, 91 percent would get a tax cut, averaging about $1,090, with 7.3 percent facing a tax increase averaging about $910.”
In March 2022, Biden, perhaps unintentionally, conceded that the Trump tax cuts had worked as advertised. The Republican had promised as president that the tax cuts would grow the economy and bring in more revenue in the end.
Biden pointed out this happened.
“[W]e 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,” he said.
Forty years takes us back to Ronald Reagan’s first term, when following across-the-board tax cuts, like those passed under Trump, the economy took off, experiencing 4.6 percent growth in 1983 and 7.2 percent in 1984.
It should also be noted that federal tax revenues doubled during the 1980s, from approximately $500 billion to almost $1 trillion.
As Trump had predicted, revenue grew substantially after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, too.
The numbers speak for themselves: The federal treasury took in $4 trillion in fiscal year 2021 and $4.9 trillion in FY 2022.
Revenue dipped back down in FY 2023 to $4.44 trillion as the economy slowed under the weight of Biden’s and the Democrats’ inflationary spending policies, which have been dialed back again since Republicans took back control of the House.
By way of comparison, the federal government took in $3.3 trillion in revenues in 2017, prior to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act being implemented.
In other words, federal revenue overall is up over $1 trillion per year.
Far from costing the treasury $2 trillion, the amount of revenue is expected to exceed what was projected before the tax cuts due to increased economic growth, the Heritage Foundation’s Preston Brashers wrote in 2022.
On Monday, Fox Business Network’s Charles Payne highlighted the irony of Biden’s comments.
“I think it’s also somewhat ironic for President Biden to say, ‘We’ve got the greatest economy in the world,’ and not mention, ‘Oh, by the way, it’s happening under Trump taxes,’” he said. “Low taxes might be working, right?”
Should the Trump tax cuts be extended?
FBN reached out to the White House regarding the president’s plan to allow the Trump tax cuts to expire.
An official there responded that in a Biden second term, “tax cuts would expire for those earning more than $400,000, but stay in place for lower- and middle-income Americans earning less than $400,000.”
But that will require actual legislation to accomplish that objective, and what Biden suggested in his social media post is that he would allow the cuts to expire.
The $2 trillion figure Biden used in his social media post is the one liberals such as Nancy Pelosi like to throw around regarding so-called lost revenue due to all the tax cuts. But Democrats never take into account the increased revenue created by a growing economy.
Biden’s too proud or committed to far-left orthodoxy to admit the tax cuts worked.
Hopefully, Trump will be elected in November and Republicans will take back the Senate and retain the House.
Among their first orders of business should be extending the 2017 tax cuts.
