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Crippling Tax Hikes, Welfare Expansion, and Washington-Controlled Health Care in President Biden’s “Framework”

October 28, 2021 — Blog    — Health    — Oversight    — Press Releases    — Select Revenue Measures    — Work and Welfare   

CLICK HERE for a printable version of this one pager.

Never has Washington spent so much to kill so many American jobs, force prices even higher, and hook a whole new generation of the poor on government dependency.

For Main Street businesses that are struggling to hire and working families whose paychecks are falling further behind, Democrats’ reckless bill couldn’t come at a worse time.

Here’s a quick summary of what’s included in Democrats’ multi-trillion-dollar tax-and-spend spree.

Health

Universal, Untargeted Entitlement Expansions

  • Democrats’ policy to extend expanded ACA subsidies until 2025 will overwhelmingly benefit wealthier Americans more than the vulnerable and spend billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize people who already have insurance.
  • Sending larger giveaways to big insurance companies serve only to paper over ever increasing health care costs with ever increasing spending.

Adding Junk Benefits to Our Unsustainable Medicare Program

  • Medicare is going broke, and the result is a slowly crumbling social safety net failing our seniors. Democrats are now adding junk benefits to Medicare, and harming seniors’ choices.
  • Instead of undermining Medicare plans with junk benefits, this Congress should focus on making it easier for seniors to choose Medicare Advantage where hearing care access is not a problem.
  • In Medicare Advantage, private plans compete for seniors’ business and deliver lower costs and higher quality— including better supplemental hearing benefits.

Budget Gimmicks

  • In November 2020, then-President Trump finalized a rule that would require drug discounts negotiated in the Part D program to be delivered to seniors at the pharmacy counter instead of being used to reduce premiums across the program.
  • Democrats’ opposed President Trump’s rebate rule, but never withdrew it because they were waiting to spend these “fake” savings generated by repealing (or delaying) the rule.
  • OMB is now an offset factory: administrations can continue to develop fake rules they have no intention of implementing, so their party allies in Congress can repeal them and spend the “money.”
  • This is fiscal malpractice.

Oversight

Giving the IRS unlimited authority to hire 87,000 new IRS agents to target families, farmers, and small businesses

  • Democrats are targeting families, farmers, and small businesses as though they are tax cheats, rather than target high-income individuals or big corporations. Nonpartisan CBO analysis assumes that, under the President’s proposal, audit rates would “rise for all taxpayers”–including EITC recipients and those of other lower and middle-income workers.
  • Democrats are playing a shell game with numbers. First, they estimated that a supercharged IRS would bring in $265 billion; now they are claiming $400 billion, even though CBO has made clear the proposal would only collect $120 billion.

Worker and Family Support

Democrats’ framework turns the GOP-created Child Tax Credit (CTC) into a permanent cash for kids welfare without work program.

  • The proposal released today includes a one-year extension of the increased and fraud-ridden CTC through 2022.
  • However, it also includes “permanent refundability” meaning the credit would be disconnected from work with no expiration date.
  • This means 5 million non-working households with children would continue receiving “no strings attached” welfare checks in perpetuity, making the IRS America’s No. 1 welfare agency.
  • Providing endless government checks that pay more to stay at home than to work hooks a new generation on government dependency.
  • Democrats’ untargeted welfare-without-work policies are holding back our jobs recovery by forcing Main Street businesses to compete with government benefits to fill record job openings.
  • With more than 10 million job openings and inflation rising, the country can’t afford to relegate an entire generation of workers to the sidelines.
  • Even Senator Manchin has conditioned his support for the credit on including a work requirement.

Select Revenue Measures

Minimum tax on U.S. companies harms American consumers and workers

  • This tax on anything “Made in America” would ensure that more of the everyday things we use are made in China and delivered on container ships.
  • Democrats’ plan would also punish businesses that specifically suffered during the pandemic.

Unvetted stock buybacks tax will reduce retirement security for seniors

  • Creates a third layer of tax on American companies—harming seniors and other savers.
  • Democrats punish companies for returning value to retirees, 401(k) plans, or pension plans with a punitive tax.

International tax increases that make it better to be a foreign company or worker

  • Democrats’ global tax plan offers foreign countries a sweetheart deal: American companies will pay a global minimum tax rate many points higher than the 15 percent rate the Biden Administration will allow for other countries.
  • This economic surrender will make Americans less competitive and will drive manufacturing, research, and investment overseas.

Punish success with new surtax on entrepreneurs and investors

  • This surtax undermines America’s successful investment infrastructure that rewards investment here in the U.S. – shifting investment decisions to Washington from individuals and local communities.
  • The result will be fewer jobs, lower wages, and less growth.

Over $400 billion in small business tax hikes

  • Millions of Main Street job creators will be left shouldering the burden of Democrats’ small business tax hike.
  • The majority of the more than 30 million small businesses in the U.S. are pass-through entities like LLCs or S Corps – all of which are directly in the crosshairs of these tax increases.

 

CLICK HERE for a printable version of this one pager.