“We’re not going to deprive any of these executives of their second or third home, travel privately by jet,” the president said at the White House.
President Biden delivered a clear and punchy message to America’s highest earners on Wednesday: I’m going to raise your taxes, but your vacation homes are safe. In an exchange with reporters at the White House, Mr. Biden defended with gusto his plans to increase taxes on high earners and the wealthy. He railed against high-earning chief executives and promised that his plans were “about making the average multimillionaire pay just a fair share.” “We’re not going to deprive any of these executives of their second or third home, travel privately by jet,” Mr. Biden said after brief remarks on an economic aid program he signed into law this year. “It’s not going to affect their standard of living at all. Not a little tiny bit. But I can affect the standard of living that people I grew up with.” The comments were the latest example of Mr. Biden and his party embracing the political and economic upsides of his proposals to tax the rich — a fight that the White House is eager to wage as the president engages in bipartisan negotiations over his $4 trillion economic agenda and a contrast to how Democratic presidents in the past have talked about their tax-increase proposals. Republicans and business groups have blasted Mr. Biden’s plans to fund new spending on roads, bridges, low-carbon energy deployment, child care, education and a host of other initiatives by raising taxes on corporations, high earners and the wealthy. Mr. Biden has responded by amplifying his arguments: In recent remarks, he has focused almost as much on the tax increases as he has on the programs they would pay for. Mr. Biden’s comments reflect both a read of public polling and a negotiating tactic. He is presenting the tax increases not simply as a method of paying for his sprawling agenda, but as a policy goal on their own, aimed at narrowing gaps in income and wealth that have been exposed in stark terms by the coronavirus pandemic. He and his aides see a chance to turn the issue against Republicans who have long preached tax cuts and hammered Democrats for supporting any tax increases. A wide range of polls now show broad public support for tax increases on high earners. A Pew Research poll last week found that Americans were much more likely to be upset that the wealthy and corporations did not pay “their fair share” in taxes than to be upset about the size of their own tax bills. “On taxes, Biden has flipped the script on Republicans,” said Rahm Emanuel, the former mayor of Chicago who worked in the Obama and Clinton administrations and is in line for an ambassadorship under Mr.
