Mark Levin Tells Us the Truth About the Debt Ceiling
Budget Reconciliation Tracker
How Biden’s Budget Busting Reconciliation Hurts the Economy, Families and Individuals
Largest Tax Increase in More than 50 Years
It would violate President Biden’s pledge that the massive $3.5 trillion price tag would not raise taxes for working-class Americans.
- Democrats’ promise that “no family making under $400,000 a year will pay a penny more in taxes” is patently false.
- The Build Back Better Act includes trillions in tax increases, and the official scorekeepers confirm that taxes would go up for middle-income Americans earning $30,000 or more per year.
The tax hikes would make America less competitive. The bill would increase the federal corporate tax rate to 26.5%, which would be even higher than the 25% corporate tax rate imposed by the Communist Party of China.
These taxes would be felt directly by all Americans as the result would be lower wages, higher prices, and lost jobs.
Resources:
- Will Biden’s Spending Bill Hike Taxes on Those Making Less Than $400,000? (October 4, 2021)
- Biden’s Absurd “Zero Cost” Claim—$3.5T Is Real Money and It’s Coming Out of Your Pocket (October 4, 2021)
- 8 Things You Need to Know About Democrats’ Tax Increase Bill (September 17, 2021)
- How Democrats Plan to Hike Taxes to Pay for $3.5 Trillion in Spending (September 13, 2021)
- Biden Making a Veiled Bid for Your Paycheck (September 10, 2021)
- 9 Things You Need to Know About the Budget Resolution’s Reckless Tax and Spending Spree (August 10, 2021)
- The Biden Administration Signs America on to a Global Tax Cartel (June 16, 2021)
- Biden’s Business Tax Hikes Would Be a Self-Inflicted Mistake for America (April 26, 2021)
- President Biden’s Corporate Tax Increase Would Reduce Wages, Harm Economic Growth, and Make America Less Competitive (April 20, 2021)
- Tax Increases Would Reverse the Success of Trump’s Tax Cuts (April 5, 2021)
- Biden’s Proposed Tax Increases Would Be Largest Since LBJ’s in 1968 (March 18, 2021)
Massive Spending Increases
Passage of the reconciliation package represents a reckless tax and spending spree that would implement controversial partisan policies that give politicians and bureaucrats more power over American families and workers.
- Whenever the government spends money, it spends somebody else’s money—in other words, your hard-earned money.
- The current fiscal trajectory is already unsustainable. This spending comes on top of more than $5 trillion that was passed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and more than $1 trillion for infrastructure that could be passed later this month. All of this would add over $9 Trillion to the $28 trillion national debt.
The goal of this big-government proposal is to put more of the economy’s resources under the control of politicians and bureaucrats rather than the private sector. Some examples:
- Green New Deal–style policies like a clean electricity standard payment program, a carbon tax, new taxes and fees on oil and gas, more subsidies and tax breaks for green energy and electric vehicles, a new Civilian Climate Corps, and climate research and development (R&D) programs across the federal government.
- Expanded Medicare and Obamacare subsidies, which would benefit higher-income individuals who already have private insurance; federalized paid family leave that could have unintended consequences; and universal pre-K and significant child care subsidies that could push children into environments that don’t reflect parents’ preferences.
Resources:
- No, Government Spending Isn’t ‘Zero Cost’ (September 29, 2021)
- 4 Ways to Understand Democrats’ $3.5 Trillion Spending Bill (September 24, 2021)
- 8 Things You Need to Know About Democrats’ Tax Increase Bill (September 17, 2021)
- Even Some Democrats Sound Alarm on Radical $3.5 Trillion Spending Bill (September 16, 2021)
- Democrats Spend Big, and We Pay, for Their Socialist Dream (September 15, 2021)
- Biden Making a Veiled Bid for Your Paycheck (September10, 2021)
- 11 Notable Topics in Senate Vote-a-Rama on Spending $3.5 Trillion (August 11, 2021)
- Infrastructure or Democratic Wish List? What to Know About Those $1.1 Trillion and $3.5 Trillion Spending Bills (August 10, 2021)
- 9 Things You Need to Know About the Budget Resolution’s Reckless Tax and Spending Spree (August 10, 2021)
- Democrats’ Spending Could Cost Taxpayers $5.5 Trillion, Sen. Cynthia Lummis Says (July 29, 2021)
- President Biden’s Tax-and-Spend Plan Expands Federal Power, Not Jobs (May 11, 2021)
- 5 Things You Need to Know About Biden’s $1.8 Trillion American Families Plan (May 10, 2021)
- Why President Biden’s Government Solutions Would Actually Weaken the Infrastructure of American Families (May 3, 2021)
Doubling the Size of the IRS While Potentially Sacrificing Financial Privacy
- The bill would give the Internal Revenue Service a lump-sum payment of $79 billion—in effect, a slush fund six times the IRS’s entire annual budget.
- There simply is no plausible way for the scandal–ridden and union-dominated agency to absorb so much extra funding and power while avoiding waste, fraud, and abuse.
- This slush fund raises the risk of a return to a politicized IRS.
- To be clear, everyone should pay the taxes that he or she legally owes, but the best way to encourage compliance is to simplify the tax code and reduce the tax burden.
Resources:
- Biden’s Proposal to Allow IRS to Track Your Bank Transactions Is Dangerous for All Americans (October 1, 2021)
- Sen. Cynthia Lummis Grills Treasury Secretary Yellen About Privacy Fears Over ‘Unconscionable’ IRS Bank Proposal (September 29, 2021)
- 8 Things You Need to Know About Democrats’ Tax Increase Bill (September 17, 2021)
- Could Biden IRS Expansion Plan Signal Return to Politicization? (June 8, 2021)
- President Biden’s Corporate Tax Increase Would Reduce Wages, Harm Economic Growth, and Make America Less Competitive (April 20, 2021)
Increasing the Debt and Exponentially Increasing Threat of Inflation
This reckless spending spree puts America on the path toward a devastating debt crisis and high inflation.
- At $3.5 trillion, this bill would increase spending by $27,000 for every household in the country. Pumping so much cash into the economy in such a short period of time could cause a dramatic surge of price inflation.
Resources:
- Be Careful When Writing Blank Checks (October 4, 2021)
- Many Consumer Prices Are Higher: Time to Eliminate Government-Imposed Economic Roadblocks (August 20, 2021)
- Infrastructure and Reconciliation Bills Undermine Competition With China (August 13, 2021)
Eliminating the Link Between Welfare and Work
- The reconciliation package severs the tie between work and welfare. By providing a permanent expansion of new unconditional cash grants for families that choose not to work, it turns back the clock on decades of welfare reform success.
- Paying able-bodied Americans not to work is not good for those individuals or for society. Welfare payouts push disadvantaged Americans out of the labor force and toward the margins of society. The point of welfare reform should be to assist Americans in their efforts to support themselves, not permanently trap them outside work.
- The Biden plan generally makes work less rewarding for those who hold jobs, discourages work for those who don’t, and undermines intergenerational modelling of the importance of work. It thereby reduces the likelihood that low-income Americans will find meaningful work and healthy marriages. Instead of stronger families and more jobs, Americans will see more dependence on government and less mobility.
Resources:
- We Shouldn’t Return to Welfare As We Knew It (September 20, 2021)
- Bait and Switch: Biden Child-Allowance “Tax Relief” Overturns Welfare Reform (July 16, 2021)
- Biden “Child Allowance” Is a Bait and Switch That Offers Zero Long-Term Tax Relief: Instead, It Permanently Eliminates Work Requirements (July 8, 2021)
Reducing Medicare Viability with Benefit Expansions
- The reconciliation package includes several bad health care–related provisions that all boil down to Washington wanting more control of America’s health care decision-making.
- One of those items is a massive expansion of government’s role in health care by expanding Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and vision services—which ignores the fact that benefits are already available through the privately administered Medicare Advantage.
- This proposed expansion also completely ignores the fiscal crisis that the current Medicare program faces. With Medicare Part A facing insolvency in 2024, lawmakers will be forced to make decisions about what will happen to the program, its beneficiaries, or the taxpayers. This is not the time to expand Medicare beyond its limits.
Resources:
- There’s (Cradle to) Grave Waste in Democrats’ $3.5 Trillion Spending Plan (September 15, 2021)
- It’s Time To Update and Improve the Annual Medicare Trustees’ Report (April 23, 2021)
- Biden’s Medicare Expansion Proposal: More Power to Washington (April 14, 2021)
- Washington Must Face the Coming Medicare Crisis (March 9, 2021)
Creating New Programs that Put Bureaucrats in Control of Your Family
- Biden’s “Build Back Better” slogan really should be “Build Back Bureaucracy.” The so-called Biden Family Plan, which is pushed in reconciliation, offers a government-knows-best model that spends huge sums of money to fund benefits that politicians create and control while piling up debt for future generations.
- The Biden plan also fails to address families’ real child care, education, and workplace leave needs. When the federal government takes more money from American families’ income and redistributes it in the form of benefits that politicians—not families—decide are necessary, past experience show that these efforts end up hurting their intended beneficiaries.
- True policy reforms should support family formation and stability. Eliminating marriage penalties in our welfare system, encouraging flexibility in work and child care, and offering more schooling options and better access to better private health plans would be good starts.
Resources:
- The Left Is Trying to Bypass Long-Standing Pro-Life Protections in $3.5 Trillion Spending Bill. Here’s What You Need to Know. (October 4, 2021)
- $3.5 Trillion Bill Spends Big on Ineffective and Unpopular Preschool and Childcare Programs (October 1, 2021)
- Preschool Funding in $3.5 Trillion Spending Bill Is Modeled After Failed Head Start Program (September 28, 2021)
- 5 Things You Need to Know About the Paid Family Leave Program in Progressive’s $3.5 Trillion Package (September 27, 2021)
- Beware the Strings Attached to All That Government Spending (September 27, 2021)
- American Families Plan Undermines Families, Self-Fulfillment (September 17, 2021)
- $3.5T Spending Bill Would Lavish Hundreds of Billions on Nanny State Education (September 10, 2021)
- Being a Parent is Hard Enough: It’s Time for Congress to Help Families Thrive (August 12, 2021)
- President Biden’s Plan Harms Families and Undermines Work (June 1, 2021)
- Biden’s Workforce Push Eclipses Women’s Personal Career and Family Choices (May 28, 2021)
- The Unintended Consequences of the American Families Plan (May 24, 2021)
- Why President Biden’s Government Solutions Would Actually Weaken the Infrastructure of American Families (May 3, 2021)
- Why Joe Biden’s So-Called “Infrastructure” Plan Is a Mistake (April 27, 2021)
- Consequential Decisions on Reconciliation and the Byrd Rule (February 4, 2021)
Implements the Green New Deal, Transforming the American Economy and Way of Life
- Regardless of how one understands global warming and climate science, these policies will have negligible impacts on global temperatures (0.04 degrees C in 100 years).
- The federal government should not attempt to upend an entire industry to force through new energy schemes. This plan strives to kill well-paying jobs within the oil, gas, and coal industry while providing roughly $270 billion for the federal governments green energy projects and $235 billion in tax favors for green energy.
- By squeezing out trusted and cost-effective energy sources, lower and middle-class Americans are left with fewer choices on how they obtain energy for their homes and vehicles. Fewer choices mean higher costs. Upper-class Americans who are inclined to buy electric vehicles will subsidized by lower and middle-income Americans.
- The reconciliation bill advances the Biden administrations commitments to the Paris Climate Agreement while allowing developing, high pollution countries to skate by.
- Increased energy costs have tremendous rippling effects throughout every sector of the economy. Not only will utility bill and transportation costs go up—food, clothing, and common household goods all become more expensive.
Resources:
- Costly Energy, Climate Policies in Democrats’ Spending Bill Lack Transparency (September 22, 2021)
- High Gasoline Prices and Biden’s Confusing OPEC Request on Oil Production (August 17, 2021)
- Congress, Don’t Let Liberals Shoehorn Harmful Energy Policies Into Budget and Infrastructure Bills (July 22, 2021)
Potentially Allows Mass Amnesty for Illegals
Resources:
- How the Left Uses Children as Pawns in Immigration Policy (August 16, 2021)
- Amnesty Is Not Infrastructure (August 2, 2021)
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