How Democrats' tax obsession could backfire

Are wealthy Democratic voters really willing to pay higher taxes in exchange for more government services?

Elizabeth Warren.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Win McNamee/Getty Images, Vagengeym_Elena_iStock)

When Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) announced her candidacy for president, she promised a laundry list of new federal programs — Medicare-for-all, universal pre-kindergarten education, debt-free college — plus the "largest working-class tax cut in decades." How did she propose paying for that tax cut? By getting rid of President Trump's tax cut for "corporations" and the "top 1 percent." But there's a flaw in the plan: While repealing the Republican-passed tax cut in its entirety, including the parts of it that benefited neither corporations nor the top 1 percent, would save an estimated $2 trillion, Harris' big ticket items would undoubtedly cost trillions more. In other words, her grand tax plan just doesn't add up.

This is a problem not just for Harris, but across the Democratic 2020 presidential field. The candidates — and their voters — want a big increase in federal spending to support new social services. But they seem to have yet to realize that simply nudging the top marginal income tax rate back up won't pay for it all. Deficits are already spiking even without this new spending, and over the long term, Republican tax cuts only account for so much of the red ink.

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W. James Antle III

W. James Antle III is the politics editor of the Washington Examiner, the former editor of The American Conservative, and author of Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?.