Joe Biden building back better one lie at a time

OPINION:

A new report from the Tax Policy Center said President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” social spending agenda would hike taxes on almost a third of America’s middle-class â€" specifically, on 30 percent of those very same families who are already, currently, presently struggling under this administration’s rising inflation and strict COVID-19 clamps on the free market.

My, how Joe’s lies do pile up.

In August of 2020, Campaign Biden said this, as captured in a Forbes headline: “Biden Pledges ‘No New Taxes’ On Incomes Under $400,000, ‘Mom And Pop’ Businesses.”

In April 2021, White House Biden said this, as captured in a partial CNBC headline: “Biden promises no new taxes on anyone making less than $400,000.” Tellingly, the rest of the headline read this way: “Experts doubt he can keep that pledge.”

Yet pledge he did.

Even the Biden-fawning Washington Post, in a fact-check, confirmed, reminding how then-candidate Joe first said on “Squawk Box” on May 22, 2020, that “nobody making under 400,000 bucks would have their taxes raised, period, bingo,” and then said on ABC’s “20/20” on August 23, 2020, that “I will raise taxes for anybody making over $400,000” but “no new taxes” for others.

No denying it. He said it. Biden promised. Period, bingo â€" no new taxes on those making less than $400,000.

But here is where the myth separates from reality.

“Taking into account all major tax provisions, roughly 20 percent to 30 percent of middle-income households would pay more in taxes in 2022,” Tax Policy Center reported. 

At first, the extra tax burden would be small, maybe in the $100 range or even less. But as the years pass, the “Build Back Better” burdens to middle-class grow. For instance, the Biden plan calls for limits on Child Tax Credits â€" something that hits at working-class America. It also fiddles with state and local tax deductions, the SALT formula, so that wealthier types in blue states, think California, think New York, get more benefits at the expense of, you guessed it, the middle class.

So much for no new taxes.

But that’s just one lie in a bucket of lies being perpetrated by Biden, by the Biden administration.

How about the lie that says infrastructure is child care, or free college?

Or the lie that suggests “Build Back Better” is in line with the Constitution, not at all a socialist-styled redistribution of wealth?

Or how about that lie that went like this, as penned in a BBC News headline from December 2020: “Joe Biden: Covid vaccination in US will not be mandatory.”

Or how about that whole Afghanistan lie about not leaving U.S. citizens behind, not leaving U.S. allies behind, not screwing over America’s foreign friends and fleeing in the dark of night?

At least Biden’s “Build Back Better” lies aren’t drawing blood.

What they are doing, though, are advancing ideas that politicians can’t be trusted, that Democrats aren’t to be relied upon, that Biden himself can’t be counted on for anything â€" excepting, of course, his utter unreliability. 

And that’s a nice way of saying he’s a serial liar.

And that’s an offhand way of saying it’s shaky, scary times for America.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.

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