Biden’s Baking an Orwellian Upside-Down Cake of Taxes and Entitlements

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It’s bad enough that President Biden and the Democratic congressional leaders essentially double-crossed the GOP bipartisan infrastructure package, including the Democrats who participated. And it’s really bad that Speaker Pelosi & Co. are holding the infrastructure package hostage to a tsunami of tax hikes and massive entitlement increases, all of which will do great damage to the economy.

Now, though, President Biden is comparing his multitrillion dollar boatload of new entitlements to tax cuts. It’s an Orwellian upside-down cake. Here’s what the President said:

“I think it’s time to give ordinary people a tax break … Why is this not a tax break for working folks when the stuff we give to the super wealthy are called tax breaks? Look, major action on clean energy, housing, caregiving, on child and paid leave, universal pre-k, free community college. The human infrastructure is intertwined with our physical infrastructure.”

Huh? They’re not tax cuts. They’re spending. Permanent spending. Remember what the great Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman said: “Keep your eye on one thing and one thing only: how much government is spending, because that’s the true tax …”

And Mr. Biden wants government cash payments without any work qualifications or other employment incentives. They are middle-class entitlements.

If you have a moment take a look at today’s Wall Street Journal editorial: “It’s the Entitlements, Stupid.” Then if you have a moment more, read the op-ed piece from my old friend and Reagan budget office colleague John Cogan titled “Biden’s plan for an entitlement society.”

So let me repeat: It’s not just a matter of bipartisan infrastructure versus something called reconciliation. In this case reconciliation means adding 21 million Americans to the list of federal entitlement beneficiaries.

Some 57% of all married-couple children would receive these benefits and more than 80% of single-parent households would be on the entitlement rolls. This is not a safety net for poor people. This is middle-class dependency. Running against the grain of the American work ethic and what should be our opportunity society.

The range of eligible incomes would be as high as $200,000. It would sum to at least a trillion dollars. And they would become permanent. Indeed, Democrats want to make the Covid relief permanent and then add onto that this new entitlement package. That’s what the word reconciliation means.

Make no mistake about it. It would be the biggest entitlement increase in 56 years. And allegedly to finance it, there would be a $2 trillion tax hike, probably closer to $3 trillion. Let’s not forget when we talk reconciliation, we’re talking about the Biden assault on success, investment, and business.

And it’s a surrender to foreign organizations — by which I mean like Group of Seven and G-20 — to tax American businesses even more. Even a larger tax assault on death. Again, that’s the meaning of this word reconciliation. It sounds like a process word, which it is, but behind it the actual meaning is a dreadful prosperity-killing tsunami — literally a binge — of higher taxes and entitlements.

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From Mr. Kudlow’s Fox News broadcast.


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