White House sharpens attacks on Rick Scott tax plan

BIDEN HITS CAMPAIGN TRAIL, BUT DOES HE HELP OR HURT DEMOCRATS?

After months of Democratic National Committee-led attacks, the White House seized on two components of Scott’s 11-point “Rescue America Plan” for the first time this week, coinciding with Tax Day. They include Scott’s opinion that more of the electorate needs “skin” in the tax “game,” contending that half the country pays no income tax, and a proposal that laws, such as those establishing Social Security and Medicare, should be renewed every five years.

Taxes matter because they have ramifications for large swaths of the public, according to Northeastern University’s political science chairman, Costas Panagopoulos.

“It is especially top of mind on Tax Day, so tapping into the salience of the issue on this day in particular to accentuate fundamental differences between Democratic and Republican approaches to tax policy is understandable,” he said.

For American Enterprise Institute senior tax policy fellow Kyle Pomerleau, the White House’s attacks on Scott have been effective because the lack of details about his plan has allowed Democrats to define it.

“His plan originally seemed to imply that he wanted everyone to contribute some amount of income tax,” Pomerleau said. “This would mean that anyone with no or negative income tax liability, due to refundable credits, [would] face a tax increase.”

“Sen. Scott has later clarified that he would exempt retirees, working families, and some others, which makes it less clear exactly what he wants to do since most people who pay little income tax are either retired or receive the earned income tax credit or child tax credit, which only go to working households,” he added.

Pomerleau urged Scott to release more information, asserting it could prove that “the White House is wrong.”

Scott’s Senate spokesman, McKinley Lewis, dismissed Biden as “the most unpopular president in recent history.” He then alleged that the White House is “spending more time lying about Sen. Rick Scott’s plan than addressing the myriad crises [Biden’s] created.”

“Joe Biden could learn a thing or two about governing from Sen. Scott, who cut taxes more than 100 times and balanced the budget as governor of Florida and is proposing commonsense solutions to rescue our country from the Democrats and their disastrous agenda,” Lewis said.

Scott, who has staunchly defended his plan in interviews and opinion pieces, also reacted to the White House on social media, where he cited Biden’s hidden inflation tax, estimated to cost households an extra $5,200 a month, with the consumer price spike now at a 40-year high of 8.5%.

Senate Republicans have distanced themselves from the plan, shared after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was adamant he and his candidates for the chamber would not provide counterproposals to Democrats before the midterm cycle. But Senate Democrats have continued to connect Scott’s plan with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate GOP campaign he chairs for this election cycle.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has even tested Scott’s plan in battleground states and detected “strong aversion” to the tax language as well as “the idea of sunsetting all federally funded programs in five years,” it told reporters.

Panagopoulos described Democrats’ strategy as “somewhat disingenuous since Republicans have not, as of yet, lined up behind Scott’s plan.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki echoed the Scott attack during a briefing this week after a staffer earlier circulated a note underscoring “the real difference between the president and congressional Republicans.”

“Republicans on Capitol Hill are more than happy to pass a nearly $2 trillion tax giveaway to the wealthy and big corporations under the previous administration,” Psaki said. “Now, led by Sen. Scott, Republicans want to raise taxes on the middle class, with one independent analysis showing their plan would hike taxes by an average of around $1,500 each year on 75 million American families, 96% of whom make under $100,000.”

The Tax Policy Center has calculated that one version of Scott’s plan in which everyone paid a minimum income tax of $100 would generate about $100 billion dollars from households earning less than $100,000, according to Pomerleau.

The number of people who believe their federal income taxes are “too high” ticked up to 50% last year, according to Gallup trend data collected since 1956. More recently, a YouGov poll found last week that 90% of respondents considered taxes to be a “very” or “somewhat important” issue. Taxes and government spending did trail healthcare, jobs and the economy, and climate change and the environment when they were asked to rank the areas.

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Biden’s RealClearPolitics average economic approval rating is about net negative 22 percentage points.