Dems suicidal legislative scheme

 Quin Hillyer:

By embracing the Manchin-Schumer tax-and-spend bill, congressional Democrats are poised to commit political hari-kari in the middle of an election year.

The public is clamoring for virtually nothing contained in this bloated bill, which meanwhile contains all sorts of provisions that will infuriate large blocs of voters.

The single most destructive element of the bill, and also by far the stupidest politically, would make taxpayers give an additional $80 billion in the next decade to the IRS — the vast majority of it to hire 87,000 more agents and conduct a massive increase in audits that will harass lower-earning taxpayers more than rich ones. The anti-Democratic television ads based on this provision will all but write themselves, and they will be politically devastating.

This bill breaks President Joe Biden’s endlessly repeated promises that he won’t agree to any tax hikes on people making less than $400,000 annually. The bipartisan Congressional Joint Economic Committee itself estimates that people earning less than $200,000 will pay (on aggregate) $16.7 billion in additional taxes next year alone. This tax hike comes as Bidenflation diminishes their living standard.

The bill’s new, 15% minimum corporate tax, meanwhile, will do less to nab big corporations than it will to impose a significant tax hike on more than a million American small businesses. Some 17,000 of those small businesses are in Arizona, where Democrat Mark Kelly faces a tough reelection battle, while 22,000 are in Colorado, where Democrat Michael Bennett’s seat is threatened.

Even more politically self-destructive is the bill’s new 16.4-cent-per-barrel tax on crude oil, which will be passed directly to consumers. With drivers already enraged about high prices at the pump, Democrats are asking for a thrashing by adding this levy.

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Wee, they are Democrats and we have come to expect this type of government greed from them.  It is the kind of thing that makes votes like me eager to vote against every Democrat on the ballot just to make sure they lose control of Congress.