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The Democratic agenda is financially punishing working families

By Ken Calvert
The Press Enterprise
May 7, 2023

Democrats in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento love to talk about their support for the working class. Unfortunately for the working class, talk is cheap. Democrat policies? Anything but cheap.

President Joe Biden has repeatedly pledged to oppose any tax increase on households making less than $400,000 per year. Meanwhile, Gov. Gavin Newsom proclaimed that “we don’t leave our workers behind” during his State of the State Address last year.

These Democrats have a funny way of protecting working families.

California has some of the highest electricity costs of any state in the country. Last year, Gov. Newsom signed into law Assembly Bill 205, requiring California’s private electric utilities to implement a new income-based fee and rate structure. Those utilities just proposed a new income-based monthly fee topping out at $85 a month for Southern California Edison customers. The fee, which is designed to pay for fixed utility costs, is in addition to the rate-based charges families are used to that are determined by their monthly energy usage.

These new income-based fees are not just for the wealthy – households earning between $69,000 and $180,000 will see a fixed cost fee of $51 on their bill every month, and those earning more than $180,000 will pay $85 a month. According to Edison, half of their ratepayers will see lower overall bills under this new fee and rate structure which means the other half of the ratepayers will not be so fortunate. And if you think this income-based billing is going to stop with your electric bill, then you clearly haven’t been paying attention to Democrats in Sacramento.

Back in Washington, the Biden Administration has rolled out a proposal that performs mental gymnastics to get around the President’s “pro-middle class” pledge. The proposal is so outrageous, it punishes Americans for having a high credit score. That’s right, under this new stupefying policy, individuals and families with high credit scores will pay a new fee on their monthly mortgage. If that’s not bad enough, the revenue from these new fees will be given to people with bad credit scores to lower their mortgage payments.

Homeowners with good credit who put 20% down when purchasing their home will be paying the highest fees. This is a dangerous policy targeting responsible families. Bear in mind that we already have significant first-time, veteran, and other homebuyer assistance programs that do not include President Biden’s punitive shakedown of fiscally-sound homeowners.

Your electric and mortgage bills are just the start. Next year, the IRS will begin implementing a new tax law passed by Democrats and signed into law by President Biden that will require massive amounts of new reporting requirements.

Under the Democrats’ law, any online transactions totaling more than $600 annually will have to be reported to the IRS. Money received through online platforms like Venmo, PayPal, Square, and CashApp totaling $600 or more will trigger the reporting requirement. If you couldn’t make it to that Taylor Swift concert or Lakers game and sell your tickets via a website like StubHub or Ticketmaster, and receive payments of more than $600, it will also trigger an IRS reporting requirement.

This sure doesn’t sound like a tax law designed to protect middle-class families making less than $400,000 a year, does it?

The Biden Administration will tell you that despite the new law, it doesn’t actually change what income is taxable. Yet the Biden Administration also just passed a law to hire 87,000 new IRS agents who will no doubt be assigned to auditing regular Americans who are simply trying to keep ahead of devastating inflation rates impacting every sector of the economy.

Innovation has always been an American strength. Usually that’s good news, but in this case Democrats in Washington and Sacramento are innovating new ways to drain working families of their hard-earned money.  Make no mistake, when they realize that these tactics are not enough to implement their big spending dreams, they will continue to find ways to take more and more of middle-class Americans’ paychecks.