President Biden has submitted his federal budget proposal to Congress. The headlines say it would expand a raft of programs, create others, and get the rich and corporations to pay for it all (all while lowering the deficit, too!).
Like every other budget every other president has ever submitted to Congress, Biden's is a purely political document. It is meant to show the various interest groups whose votes he needs in November that he cares about their issues, even if he understands that his proposal is going nowhere, fast.
But that doesn't mean we can't marvel in the staggering amount of magical thinking that went into this document's creation. Behold this example:
In a $7.3 trillion budget for fiscal 2025, Biden would have Congress offer universal prekindergarten education, provide 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, expand anti-poverty tax credits and create a new tax break for first-time home buyers.
Somehow, the idea to give every taxpayer a pony was left out. Better luck next time, right?
But how to pay for all this cloying government? Why, through an exacting, painful, and extremely expensive enforcement regime, of course. But don't worry, Mr. and Mrs. Middle Class…only the rich kulaks will be forced to pay up:
Biden's budget would increase the minimum tax on billion-dollar corporations to 21 percent from 15 percent. It would raise taxes on U.S. multinationals' foreign income to 21 percent from 10.5 percent, and eliminate some tax deductions for executive compensation.
It would also bolster funding for the Internal Revenue Service to train additional scrutiny on those same individuals and businesses. Biden's budget would grant the agency an additional $104.3 billion — on top of an existing $60 billion expansion from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act — over the next decade. Administration officials said that would generate $341 billion in net revenue, a nearly three-to-one return on investment ratio.
In other words, Mr. Biden would go the full George III and, “erect[] a multitude of New Offices, and sen[d] hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.”
Or, to be less poetic about it, the IRS would become muscular enough to harass, squeeze, browbeat, and intimidate just about anyone and everyone. All to feed the insatiable appetite of Mr. Biden's nanny state.
The trick to all of this is to make sure Republicans – bless their statist hearts – don't get into a bidding war with the White House, crafting their own version of a “swarm of Offices” to fund their preferred version of overweening government.
I'm not exactly confident they will refrain from such a course. But one can hope that even populists understand there's only so much the state can squeeze from the rich…before it is forced to squeeze everyone else even more to meet its demands.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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