The White House said Thursday that the administration believes businesses that benefited from former President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts can “bear the brunt” of paying for President Biden’s nearly $2 trillion infrastructure package, despite the strain of rolling lockdowns over the last year.
Asked about House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s position that Republicans back infrastructure spending but not new taxes, press secretary Jen Psaki said businesses can handle the proposed 7 percent hike in the corporate tax rate.
“We believe that corporations should be able to bear the brunt for investing in America’s workers, but they can come forward with their ideas,” Psaki said at her daily press briefing. “We believe we can start from a place where we agree.”
But pressed on whether it made sense to burden businesses that are struggling, Psaki insisted companies “can afford to help but rebuild our workforce” and “make sure infrastructure makes us competitive with China.”
President Joe Biden speaks briefly to the press at the start of a cabinet meeting in the East Room of the White House. Drew Angerer/Getty Images“That’s exactly why we shouldn’t be increasing taxes on the American people, on people making less than $400,000 a year,” Psaki said. “But we shouldn’t be putting in place user fees, because people are still trying to get through this period of time.”
“Corporations who have had their tax rate lowered to 21 percent, lower by a great margin than it’s been ever in history, corporations that didn’t pay any taxes in 2018,” she continued.
“We think they can afford to help but rebuild our workforce, help invest in industries of the future and make sure infrastructure makes us competitive with China.”
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, meanwhile, hailed Biden’s package as “just good policy” and “common sense.”
“We put a proposal on the table to pay for [infrastructure],” Klain said in an interview with Politico. “If people have other ideas on how to pay for this investment, then they should put those on the table.”
Klain said, “‘These are things this country has been talking about for decades. The question is are we going to stop talking about them and actually do them, and if we are going to do them, how are we going to pay for them?”
Biden rolled out his infrastructure and jobs plan in a speech Wednesday in Pittsburgh that proposes huge spending on roads, railways and airports, electric vehicles and broadband that would be paid for in taxes on corporations and individuals.
“The rest of the world is closing in and closing in fast. We can’t allow this to continue,” Biden said during his address.
The president said hiking the corporate rate to 28 percent from 21 percent would still mean they have the lowest rate at any point between World War II and 2017, when it was slashed by Trump from 35 percent.
He is also proposing a 15 percent minimum tax on corporate profits reported to investors so that deductions won’t allow lower payments, as well as taxing companies’ overseas profits.
