You may think President Joe Biden is a dreamer, always reaching for more powers, laws and regulations he can’t possibly believe Congress and the courts will give him. And that’s true on one level. But on another level, he’s an incrementalist, willing to settle for a foot in the door that he will later use to barge in.
The examples are legion.
He was able to get Democrats to pass a 1 percent tax on corporate stock buybacks that began in January. He is now asking Congress to raise that tax to 4 percent.
But since Democrats have come to hate corporate stock buybacks, there’s no reason to think Biden would stop at 4 percent if Congress passed it. That would only be another step toward demanding a 10 percent buyback tax or prohibiting stock buybacks altogether.
The good news is Biden probably won’t get that tax increase with the House of Representatives in Republican hands. The bad news is Biden is allowing agencies to do his dirty work. CNBC reports, “U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said companies that voluntarily agree to forgo stock buybacks for five years will get preferential treatment when the agency doles out $52 billion authorized under the CHIPS and Science Act.”
And then there’s Democrats’ long-standing quest to impose price controls on prescription drugs.
Biden’s misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) included a provision that allows the government to impose price controls—which Democrats refer to as “negotiations”—on 10 prescription drugs available under the Medicare Part D prescription drug program. That provision passed last August, and the “negotiations” don’t go into effect until 2026.
But in his proposed budget, Biden expands the number of drugs to be included in in the price-control scheme.
According to Politico, “Biden’s proposed budget would roughly double the number of drugs subject to Medicare price negotiation and decrease the number of years medicines are excluded from negotiation to five years for both drugs and biologics.”
The article continues, “The proposal, if approved by Congress, would empower CMS to negotiate 20 Part D drugs in 2026 and 40 Part B and Part D drugs each subsequent year.”
And this is only the beginning. Biden’s budget includes a new wealth tax, expanded Medicare taxes, higher corporate income and individual income tax rates, a crypto currency transaction tax and a crypto mining tax, and many more.
But don’t be fooled by any of these initial proposals. Biden’s goal is to get his foot in the door—or better yet, the taxpayers’ pockets. Like the stock buyback tax and Medicare price controls, he will soon be barging in for even more.
March 14, 2023