With President Joe Biden pushing congressional Democrats to increase taxes and chip away at former President Donald Trump’s tax law, Republicans are preparing for battle with a “boot camp.”
Rather than pushups and pullups, the members walked through percentages, averages, and milestones supporting their defense of the cuts.
House Republicans held a messaging session on Tuesday with a refresher on the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act aimed at bringing freshman and other Republicans who were not in Congress at that time, about 80 in total, up to speed on the history and arguments in favor of the bill.
“We made America competitive again at a time when we were losing companies,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise said after the training session. “Thousands of American companies had left the United States because we weren’t competitive. We had a 35% tax rate when the world average was 23%.”
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Biden’s American Families Plan proposal suggests raising the top individual income tax rate from 37% to 39.6%, as well as taxing capital gains for anyone making $1 million or more as ordinary income. In addition, his infrastructure and jobs plan proposes raising the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 28%, a move opposed by major corporations.
Some Democratic strategists are encouraging lawmakers not to be so wary of making hikes, as they have been in the past. An April Morning Consult poll found that 65% of registered voters strongly support or somewhat support increasing taxes on corporations in order to pay for Biden’s infrastructure plan,
“The old tax code, the old broken complex tax code that Joe Biden wants to take us back to, was almost anti-American,” said Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, the ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee who helped craft the legislation. “It slowed growth in America. It destroyed jobs. It kept paychecks flat for more than a decade, and every week, it seemed like we read about a new U.S. company moving overseas, taking their jobs, their manufacturing, and hurting those communities that were left behind.”
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Freshman Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, who has 17 years of experience in the finance and banking industries, suggested some consequences for families that were less abstract.
“My wife and I are actually having a conversation right now about selling our home. But if the capital gains rate goes from 20% to 40%, it’s a very different conversation,” he said. “If you want to see frankly black families or Hispanic families lose jobs or get paid less money, raise the corporate income tax in our country. Make it harder for small businesses to actually keep more of their money to invest in their businesses.”
