President Joe Biden promised over and over again on the 2020 campaign trail that he would not raise taxes on any American making less than $400,000 per year.
“None of you will have your taxes raised. Anyone making less than $400,000 will not see a penny in taxes raised. You will actually see your standard of living go up and your costs go down,” Biden said during an interview with ABC News. "No new taxes. There would be no need for any."
Americans for Tax Reform has put together a compilation of his statements and promises:
But that promise could soon be broken. Incoming Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg suggested an increase in the gas tax just last week.
Transportation Secretary nominee Pete Buttigieg expressed an openness to a federal gas tax increase in order to pump more money into the suffering Highway Trust Fund.
During his confirmation hearing on Thursday, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., was asked about a tax hike to help fund infrastructure by Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla.
"Well, I think all options need to be on the table," Buttigieg said. "As you know, the gas tax has not been increased since 1993, and it's never been pegged to inflation. And it's one of the reasons why the current state of the Highway Trust Fund is that there's more going out than coming in."
Biden's nominee for Commerce Secretary did the same this week during her Senate confirmation hearing, justifying a tax increase in order to pay for a "climate" agenda and new infrastructure projects.
Further, Biden promised to repeal the Trump tax cuts, which will force a tax increase on the middle class.
The Tax Policy Center estimates that 65 percent of people paid less under the law and that just 6 percent paid more. (The rest saw little change to their taxes.)
Other analyses reached similar conclusions. The Joint Committee on Taxation — Congress’s nonpartisan team of tax analysts — found that every income group would see a tax cut on average. So did the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank that was sharply critical of the law. In fact, that group went even further: In a December 2017 analysis, it found that every income group in every state would pay less on average under the law in 2019.