The Daily Wire's Candace Owens slammed President Joe Biden for his Build Back Better agenda and suggested that his massive government spending only makes Americans less free, and linked his fiscal policy to that of former Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Woodrow Wilson.
Owens began by referencing a speech Johnson gave to black Howard University students in 1965, the year after he signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
During this address, Johnson said that "Freedom is the right to share, share fully and equally, in American society–to vote, to hold a job, to enter a public place, to go to school. It is the right to be treated in every part of our national life as a person equal in dignity and promise to all others. But freedom is not enough."
Owens then critiqued this speech, questioning how Johnson could come to the conclusion that it is not enough to liberate people and "open the gates of opportunity."
She goes on to point out other aspects of the speech, in which Johnson said that white Americans must take responsibility for the oppression black Americans have endured throughout the country's history. He also called on white people to hold themselves accountable for black poverty.
"It was the day that white people were told that they were now responsible for black people, but also, it signifies the day that black people were told that we're not responsible for ourselves," Owens said of the day the speech was given.
Even after the creation of welfare programs under Johnson's "Great Society," which Owens asserts was started with the intention of helping poor black people, these individuals remain in poverty. In fact, black Americans are poorer today than they were when this "war on poverty" began in 1964 despite $22 trillion being spent on social welfare, according to Owens.
She then connects Johnson's social programs to the government reliance of today, arguing that it was the government, not COVID, that shut down many businesses during the coronavirus pandemic.
Owens links the "Great Society" to Biden's Build Back Better agenda, which includes a massive $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill that is being pushed by Democrats in Congress, by saying that the government wants to replace American freedom with a welfare state that promises incentives such as free childcare, free college and more.
A clip is played showing Biden alleging that his massive spending plan would both cost nothing and be funded through higher taxes for the wealthy, whom the president has repeatedly claimed do not "pay their fair share." However, as Owens notes, the top 10 percent of income earners pay 71 percent of income taxes, a figure backed by data from The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
In a critique of the "tax the rich" mantra that was originally pioneered by the Wilson administration but is now being pushed by the Democrats of today, Owens claimed that a higher tax on wealthy individuals leads to them scaling back spending, which, in turn, reduces government revenue and strips jobs and potential earnings from the poor.
In the years following Wilson's departure from office, when taxes on the rich were lowered, more taxes were paid by the wealthy, more jobs were available and more income was earned by Americans.
"It is a fact that when tax rates are cut for the rich, the poorer and the government get richer," Owens said, adding that people are more inclined to spend their money if they are being treated fairly.