Joe Biden’s New Deal
Between 1932 and 1980, the widely accepted economic consensus in America supported a combination of high tax rates on the wealthy, strong labor unions and significant investments in infrastructure. Only the few on the extreme right objected to these policies. This period created the greatest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world.
Unfortunately, that New Deal consensus was rejected beginning in 1980 in favor of lower taxes on the wealthy and corporations, low wages, the deregulation of big business and a decline in public investments. The result of the Reagan era consensus was that the rich got much richer while middle class incomes stagnated.
The Reagan era policies took a big hit as a result of the Bush recession of 2008–09. President Obama was the first president who took on and tried to roll back Reaganite economic policies. The ACA raised taxes on the wealthy to pay for heath insurance for the poor, the elderly and the sick. It’s no wonder the D.C. Republicans were so outraged.
The Dodd-Frank law was the most far reaching regulation of Wall Street since the Franklin Roosevelt Administration. One pampered, billionaire banker compared Obama’s policies to the German invasion of Poland in 1939. You can’t make this stuff up. Unfortunately, Obama’s work remained unfinished since the GOP regained control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010.
President Biden is now in a position to obliterate once and for all Reagan era economic policies. The pandemic of 2020–21 has shifted the tectonic plates of American politics like no other event since the Great Depression. The majority of the American people now see government as part of the solution — and not the problem.
Now that the Congress has passed President Biden’s American Rescue Plan, infrastructure week is finally here. (It was a running joke during the failed Trump Administration.) Biden’s American Jobs Plan will become the New Deal of our time.
From CNBC: “The infrastructure plan includes about $2 trillion in spending over eight years… The legislation would raise the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%, which, in concert with other proposed reforms, would fund the new spending in 15 years.
Biden’s plan would also raise the global minimum tax rate for multinational corporations to 21% and eliminate a current tax exemption on profits on foreign investments.
The Biden plan would invest $620 billion into transportation efforts, including repairing thousands of bridges, expanding public transit, prioritizing electric vehicles and taking steps to account for the effects of climate change.
Billions more would go toward delivering universal broadband access, replacing every lead pipe and service line in the nation and laying thousands of miles of transmission lines.
The plan would also direct $400 billion to care for elderly and disabled Americans, and inject huge sums into upgrading drinking-water infrastructure, homes and schools.”
President Biden’s infrastructure plan is very popular. According to a new poll from Politico/American Consult: “By a 2-to-1 margin, registered voters backed a hypothetical $3 trillion infrastructure package financed by tax increases on those making over $400,000 as well as raising the corporate tax rate. ..Individual components that have been floated — on boosting electric vehicles, universal pre-K, low-income housing and more — also poll well.”
It’s going to create millions of new jobs and that will make the sabotage minded D.C. Republicans very angry. “Economists are becoming positively giddy about the potential for economic growth this year as President Biden and Congressional Democrats look set to push forward a $3 trillion infrastructure bill. S&P predicts Biden’s infrastructure plan will create 2.3 million jobs by 2024, inject $5.7 trillion into the economy — which would be 10 times what was lost during the recession — and raise per-capita income by $2,400,” Axios reported.
The Republicans and their billionaire donor class are already crying poor mouth and predicting doom if we raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Poor babies. As a consequence of the failed 2017 Trump tax cuts, the effective corporate rate for U.S. corporations is a mere 8%. 91 corporations pay zero corporate taxes. Those are your true welfare queens.
According to economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman of the University of California at Berkeley: “American billionaires paid less in taxes in 2018 than the working class, analysis shows — and it’s another sign that one of the biggest problems in the US is only getting worse. In 2018, billionaires paid 23% of their income in federal, state, and local taxes, while the average American paid 28%”
Billionaires in the U.S. added a staggering $1 trillion to their net worth during the recession and pandemic. I think they can afford to pay a tax increase that will fund an economic boom that benefits all Americans.
The D.C. Republicans predicted that tax increases on the wealthy would cause a recession during the Clinton and Obama Administrations. Approximately 22 million new jobs were created during the Clinton Administration, poverty declined and middle class wages rose. During the Obama years, unemployment declined from 10% to 4.6%.
Why would anybody believe the D.C. Republicans after they have been so wrong for so long? The D.C. Republicans want Biden and the country to fail so they can grab power again. Why are the D.C. Republicans so cynical and so negative?
The Republicans are the party of the rich, sabotage, mass unemployment, mass illness, mass death and violence. The Republicans will always be the party of Donald Trump.
The Democrats are the party of the people, prosperity, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the ACA. We must never let the voters forget that. History matters. Now let’s get it done!