Biden Pushes Populist Agenda As He Shifts Into Campaign Mode

President Joe Biden gave his State of the Union address Thursday evening. The president dedicated a significant portion of the speech to the U.S. economy and his plan if he is elected to a second term in office, laying on the populist rhetoric thick in an attempt to appeal to the average American voter.

Biden laid out plans to tax the wealthy and big corporations while reassuring the middle class they would not pay “one penny more” in taxes. He also proposed policies that would help the working American like home-buying credits, caps on prescription drug costs and regulations placed on junk fees.

In a detailed statement released by the White House, the administration said, “President Biden believes large corporations should pay their fair share, and is committed to reversing the massive tax giveaway to big corporations that Republicans enacted in 2017.”

This is a reference to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed by the Trump administration, which lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. Biden is proposing raising it to 28%.

Another piece of his proposal would disallow companies to deduct employee salaries over $1 million from their taxes. Previously only top-level executives were included in this provision. The White House has projected that this proposal would raise $270 billion over 10 years.

Biden also targeted large multinational corporations that shift jobs overseas and stash profits in tax havens. In 2021, Biden and 130 other countries came together and established a global minimum tax that, according to the White House, “will eliminate incentives to shift jobs and profits abroad, and ensure multinational corporations pay their fair share here at home.” During his speech, he called on Congress to implement the agreement with a 21% rate on multinationals up from 15%, which was enacted by Democrats two years ago.

Biden’s plan tackles the issue of stock buybacks, when companies buy their own shares from the market to raise the value of the shares still held by investors. This is an easy way to produce profits for shareholders but does nothing to encourage economic growth or productivity. Biden has proposed to raise the stock buyback tax from just 1% to 4%.

Biden touted his extra funding of the IRS, which the White House says is being used to, “Crackdown on wealthy and big business tax cheats.” The IRS has used the extra funding to, “collect more than $500 million in unpaid taxes from fewer than 2,000 delinquent millionaires.”

Biden isn’t just targeting big business however, he says there will also be tax hikes for the wealthiest .01% of the population, those with a wealth of more than $100 million. Due to loopholes and tax preferences, many wealthy Americans pay an average of only 8% of their full incomes. Biden has said he wants to levy a 25% minimum tax on that upper .001%. This, says the White House, would help to lower the deficit by $3 trillion over the next ten years.

But Biden’s policies are not all just tax hikes. He is aiming to lower taxes for middle and low-income Americans by $765 billion over the next decade.

Biden said he would extend and expand the Child Tax Credit, cutting taxes by an average of $2,600, affecting over 40 million households. He also spoke on strengthening the Earned Income Tax Credit for workers without children, which would cut those individuals’ taxes by around $800 a year. Biden also promised to make lower health insurance premiums permanent by codifying his premium tax credit that was brought into play with the success of the Affordable Care Act.