After spending the past year railing against Democrats’ expanded tax cuts for 36 million families, Republicans are now openly campaigning on hiking taxes on millions of working class families.
National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Rick Scott’s just-released policy agenda — titled, “An 11 Point Plan” — calls for tax hikes on “over half of Americans,” insisting, “All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount.”
As the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake put it, “The language of the plan itself effectively acknowledges it’s advocating for an income tax increase on ‘over half of Americans.'”
Even Republicans’ supporters on the right are questioning the wisdom of a campaign pledge to raise taxes on millions. Over on Twitter, National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru wrote, “Might also have been good to put out an agenda that did not include raising taxes on more than a hundred million Americans.”
By contrast, Republicans spent 2021 slamming and opposing Democrats’ expanded child tax credit, a monthly tax cut for 36 million families with kids. And they made their priorities even more clear in 2017, passing their tax law which slashed tax rates for highly-profitable corporations like Chevron and Wells Fargo and sent billions of dollars in tax breaks to their richest campaign donors, while “fai[ing] to deliver” for the American people.
And over the last few months, Republicans, including Scott, have cheered inflation while opposing policies to mitigate it, because they argue that higher costs for families can help them politically.
“A clear choice is emerging for voters this November: While Democrats are advocating common sense, popular policies to lower health care, prescription drug, and child care costs for families — and championing tax relief for working people — Republicans are pushing tax hikes on tens of millions of families,” said American Bridge 21st Century spokesperson Brad Bainum. “Every single GOP incumbent and Republican congressional candidate will have to answer for Rick Scott and the NRSC’s proposal to hike taxes on millions of working families.”
This issue won’t be going away in the months ahead. As Blake put it over at the Post, “The political ads almost write themselves: The leader of the effort to elect a Senate majority wants to use that to raise taxes on as much as half of the country.”
