The Democrats Are The Party Of Middle Class Tax Cuts
The Democrats have long had the reputation of being the tax and spend party. This all began in the 1930s when Franklin Roosevelt aide and close friend Harry Hopkins said: “We shall tax and tax, and spend and spend, and elect and elect.” This reputation is also based upon the fact that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama raised taxes on the wealthy and that Joe Biden has proposed to do the same.
What is little known is that Clinton, Obama and Biden have all cut taxes for the middle class. Unfortunately, the GOP is known as the party that cut taxes even though most of the benefits from their failed tax cuts have flowed to the wealthy and corporations. Let’s take a little trip down memory lane and see how the last three Democratic presidents cut taxes for the middle class.
During the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton promised a middle class tax cut. However, he had to defer that promise since he was pressured by the bond markets, Alan Greenspan, the GOP and the “liberal” mainstream media to prioritize deficit reduction during his first term. Nevertheless, Clinton cut taxes with overwhelming bi-partisan support in 1997. Most of the tax cuts in the bill went to the middle class and low income taxpayers.
The 1997 tax bill contained the child tax credit, education savings accounts and the Roth IRA. Capital gains taxes were also cut in this same bill. The bill was a product of the divided government at the time. If the current breed of D.C. Republicans had controlled Congress in 1997, no bill would’ve passed since the Congressional Republicans have since prioritized obstruction and sabotage of Democratic presidents.
Barack Obama tried to overcome GOP obstruction in 2009 by including $260 billion in middle class tax cuts in the Recovery Act. Nevertheless, that bi-partisan gesture garnered zero Republican votes in the House and only three Republican votes in the Senate. The 2009 Recovery Act at the time was the largest middle class tax cut in history. What’s more, the Recovery Act was a huge success that saved 1 to 3 million jobs and ended the deepest recession since the Great Depression.
Joe Biden has followed in the tradition of the last two Democratic presidents and has cut taxes for the middle class. The American Rescue Plan contained $492 billion in tax cuts for the middle class and lower income families. In contrast, the failed 2017 Trump tax cuts reduced taxes for the middle class by about $400 billion. Approximately 80% of the Trump tax cuts went to the top 1%.
The Biden tax cuts were mostly in the form of tax credits and stimulus checks. According to a Politico Article dated April 25: “(T)hose earning less than $75,000, on average, will owe nothing in federal income taxes. Those making between $75,000 and $100,000 will pay a scant 1.8 percent average tax rate this year, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation predicts.”
“It was a big honking tax cut for low- and moderate-income people,” said Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center.
“It plays against type — Democrats are not supposed to cut taxes, Democrats are supposed to raise taxes.”
Every Republican voted against the largest middle class tax cut in U.S. history. This is because the D.C. Republicans are invested in the failure of the Biden Administration and the American people. It is also because there were no tax cuts for the wealthy in the American Rescue Plan. The D.C. Republicans believe that rich people don’t have enough money and that the poor and middle class have it too easy.
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, middle class tax cuts, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the ACA. We must never let the voters forget that. History matters. Now let’s get it done!