With first lady Jill Biden in tow, President Joe Biden promised to pay for proposed new spending on childcare and education by cracking down on tax avoidance and making corporations pay their “fair share.”
“I think it’s about time we started giving tax breaks and tax benefits to working-class families and middle-class families, instead of just the very wealthy,” Biden said while speaking in Portsmouth, Virginia. Placards in the room touted the administration’s message of “Getting America BACK ON TRACK.”
The president’s American Families Plan would allocate $1 trillion toward spending on education and childcare over 10 years and $800 billion in tax credits aimed at low- and middle-income families. It would also spend $200 billion to provide free, universal pre-K education, $109 billion for tuition-free community college, and $62 billion to boost completion rates at schools with high numbers of low-income students.
In a nod to the first lady, an English professor at Northern Virginia Community College and longtime advocate for increased funding for public education, Biden said: “If I didn’t have these positions, I’d be sleeping the Lincoln Bedroom.”
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Biden also took aim at “millionaires and billionaires,” leaning into a refrain that Democratic pollster John Anzalone said is widely popular.
Instead of running from the tax hikes, Anzalone said Biden should talk more about raising taxes on the rich, branding the hike as one of “tax fairness.” There are few issues that are as universally popular as hiking taxes on businesses and on people earning more than $400,000 a year, Anzalone told Axios last month.
“Do we want to give the wealthiest people in America another tax cut, or do you want to give every high school graduate the ability to earn a community college degree?” Biden said.
The Bidens visited an elementary school and an HVAC repair class to sell the White House’s two-part, $4 trillion infrastructure, jobs, and families proposal, a trip billed as the latest stop in the White House’s “Getting America Back on Track” tour. Biden will be on the road again this week, in Lake Charles and New Orleans, Louisiana, to talk about the infrastructure plan.
Biden’s proposals will need to squeak through narrow Democratic majorities in Congress to make it to his desk. His plan includes traditional “hard” infrastructure spending on bridges, transit, highways, and even high-speed internet, as well as measures that have garnered push-back. Biden wants to broaden the definition of infrastructure to include child and elder care, or wage increases, all financed by increased taxes on corporations and the wealthy.
Republicans have balked at this, as have some Democrats.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Monday that Republicans are not willing to pay for the spending by undoing the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Both sides will also need to find agreement on what can be termed infrastructure. A counterproposal by a group of Republican lawmakers totals $568 billion, about one-quarter of what Biden’s American Jobs Plan has proposed.
Biden is hopeful that some Republicans will back his plans, with negotiations expected to continue at least through Memorial Day, a longer timeline than the earlier COVID-19 package, which Democrats passed under special budgetary rules with a party-line vote.
“I think there’s overwhelming bipartisan support for this,” Biden said Monday. But he was referring to polling showing parts of his plans are popular beyond Washington, something he acknowledged by saying he still needs to convince some GOP lawmakers to get on board.
The president and his aides have sought to redefine bipartisanship to include the support of voters and elected officials outside of Washington instead of on Capitol Hill. However, Republican members are not having it and have harshly criticized him.
Citing polls, chief of staff Ron Klain said on Sunday that most people want what the White House is selling.
“Overwhelming number of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, favor more bridges, roads, and infrastructure. They favor investing in child care, giving people help, taking care of their elderly relatives. They favor broadband,” Klain said on Face the Nation before taking aim at lawmakers in Washington.
“They have support from Republican governors, Republican mayors. I think what we have to see is whether or not Republicans in Washington join the rest of America in broadly supporting these commonsense ideas to grow our economy and to make our families better,” he added.
But the White House will also need all 50 Democrats to move forward, including some who have voiced concerns about measures proposed in a companion tax bill to pay for the spending.
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A 36-year Delaware senator, Biden, on Monday, said his American Families Plan won’t add to the deficit because corporations will “pay their fair share” of taxes. Biden said he isn’t “anti-corporate,” but “it’s about time they started paying their fair share.”
He added, “You have 50 corporations making $40 billion that didn’t pay a single penny in taxes.”
