A MINORITY POINT OF VIEW: One of the big questions about the big tax negotiation of 2025, perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, is how narrow it might be.
That’s because Republicans largely want to preserve all of the individual provisions from their 2017 tax law, while President Joe Biden repeatedly has vowed not to raise taxes on any households making less than $400,000 a year.
Other Democrats haven’t really pushed to dissuade the White House from that position, though it’s clearly also quite possible that Donald Trump will be in the Oval Office for those 2025 talks.
In any event, Ben Ritz of the Progressive Policy Institute is out with a new paper arguing that Democrats should get rid of that pledge, even if it means that more middle-income people pay more in taxes.
There are fiscal reasons for that, according to Ritz, who argues that deficits currently at an unsustainable path, with long-term mismatches between spending and revenues that will require higher taxes on more than just the wealthiest.
But it’s not just a numbers issue either, Ritz maintains — a government where the very few end up providing the money to pay for a wide range of services just won’t work over the long haul, because those who aren’t providing the resources won’t care enough about whether those services are needed or well run.
“Pragmatic progressives must pressure the Biden administration to soften the president’s misguided tax pledge heading into a potential second term. They must start making the case to voters why progressive programs are worth paying for,” Ritz writes.
