View this email in your browser

**APRIL 23, 2021**

Kuttner on TAP

Tax and Spend!

****

The original of the epithet made famous by Ronald Reagan was an aphorism
attributed to FDR's aide Harry Hopkins: "Tax and tax, spend and spend,

**elect and elect**." And it worked-as long as regular people were
getting the benefit of those revenues and rich people were paying the
taxes.

For half a century, Democrats forgot this formula and were thoroughly
intimidated by Reaganism, to the point of joining Republicans in cutting
taxes on rich people and starving government's capacity to benefit
everyone else. By some miraculous alchemy, Joe Biden is channeling Harry
Hopkins, and the result is popular.

Biden's plan, to be formally unveiled next week, will hike the capital
gains rate on the very rich, raise the top rate on the personal income
tax, double down on tax enforcement of wealthy tax cheats, and add a
minimum corporate tax rate that overrides loopholes. All of this will
help pay for benefits that are also popular, like universal
pre-kindergarten, child care, free community college, and better care of
the elderly and better pay for caregivers.

Progressives like me are torn between celebrating Biden's recovery of
Rooseveltian consciousness, and pressing Biden to do even more, now that
the virtue of tax-and-spend has been rediscovered.

For instance, the Biden package needs a tax on financial transfers, not
just for the revenue but to take the profit out of predatory short-term
trading. And wealth has become so grotesquely concentrated that we could
also use a wealth tax, both for the revenue and for the deconcentration.

Even as Biden proposes to raise lots of new revenue, the limits of
what's being raised are pinching his imagination. Progressives in
Congress want the Child Tax Credit to be made permanent. Biden's
proposal is to extend it by five years, since that costs less in terms
of revenue needed to be raised.

But Democrats may not have a congressional majority in five years.
Making the credit permanent now increases the chance that they will.

Tax-and-spend has political and fiscal momentum. This is the moment to
maximize it.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

[link removed]

Foxconn Finally Admits Con

But Wisconsin remains on the hook for as much as $1.34 billion for the
doomed project. The folly of throwing money at corporations as a jobs
strategy has never been clearer. BY DAVID DAYEN

Biden Proposes Government Actually Try to Create Broadband Competition

The broadband proposal in the American Jobs Act prioritizes
allowing utilities and co-ops to provide a public option to compete with
telecom monopolies. This would be a critical step. BY SEAN GONSALVES &
CHRISTOPHER MITCHELL

Place Human Lives Over Pharma's Property Rights

The Biden administration is divided over whether to waive trade
protections for Big Pharma-with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo as a
key industry ally. BY MAX MORAN & ZENA WOLF

Altercation: Damn the Author, but Don't Cancel the Book

On the new, deficient Philip Roth biography and the apparently
sociopathic biographer BY ERIC ALTERMAN

First 100: ...And Don't Forget Health Care

Biden moves health care improvements out of the infrastructure package.
BY DAVID DAYEN

To receive this newsletter directly in your inbox, click here to
subscribe. 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

YOUR TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION SUPPORTS INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM

Copyright (c) 2021 The American Prospect. All rights reserved.
_________________

Sent to [email protected]

Unsubscribe:
[link removed]

The American Prospect, Inc., 1225 I Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC xxxxxx, United States