Biden wants to tax and triangulate

When Joe Biden heads to Pennsylvania tomorrow to give a speech announcing his 2024 budget, he will be taking the latest in a series of steps to stake out a platform for reelection.

In his State of the Union speech last month, Biden sketched a populist flavor of progressivism with promises of spending boosts and buy-American measures. Over recent weeks, the administration has showed signs of taking a tougher approach to immigration, embracing restrictive policies that the White House once rejected. Last week he backed out of a promise to veto a Congressional block on legislation in DC that would soften the city’s criminal code.

Ahead of tomorrow’s speech, Biden has an op-ed in the New York Times in which he outlines his plan to “extend Medicare for another generation.” He says he will do this by raising taxes on households earning over $400,000, reprising a familiar 2020 refrain. The plan is a case of tax-and-triangulate. The president is moving right on issues like immigration and holding firm with a populist mix of big spending and protectionist economics that his team evidently thinks will help Biden appeal to the working-class voters he needs to win re-election.

Biden’s budget-balancing also underscores the unenviable position Republican lawmakers find themselves in, in large part thanks to their own irreconcilable promises on fiscal policy. Spare a thought for Kevin McCarthy’s team. In the ongoing debt fight, they must somehow find a way to deliver a promised plan to eradicate the deficit in a decade without raising taxes or touching Medicare and Social Security. Good luck, guys!

There’s an uncomfortable air of unreality to fiscal debates in Washington these days. The Biden administration spent months sticking to a bad-faith and preposterous claim that their massive spending plans were fully costed and deficit neutral. Then they tried to tout Biden as a thoroughgoing fiscal hawk, simply because one-off Covid emergency spending happened to expire while he was in office.

Most popular

Tim Shipman

The second coming of Gordon Brown

Meanwhile, the right seems unable to offer up a coherent answer to what the government should and shouldn’t be spending money on. Republicans mostly agree that entitlements reform is a no-go, that taxes are too high, that the deficit is too big, that defense spending may need to go up if we are going to properly meet the China challenge. And Republicans also know that you cannot do all these things at once.

On our radar

Powell’s warning Fed Chair Jay Powell delivered a clear warning in a high-stakes congressional hearing yesterday. Recent economic data was “stronger than expected,” he said, cautioning that “the ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously anticipated.”

Gallego on Buttigieg “I used to serve drinks at Pete Buttigieg’s little politics club at the Institute of Politics,” Democratic congressman and Arizona Senate candidate Ruben Gallego said in an interview with the Washington Post. “I hated them all.”

*** Sign up to receive the DC Diary in your inbox here ***

Fox News isn’t feeling Tucker’s Jan 6 story

On Monday, Tucker Carlson presented cherry-picked footage from the January 6 riot at the Capitol in an effort to downplay its severity. The report from the anchor has been widely criticized, including by numerous Republicans in Congress. Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana was quoted as saying, “I was there on Jan. 6. It was not peaceful. It was an abomination.” One notable group of people not reporting the footage as the blockbuster gamechanger that Carlson has claimed it is? Producers and anchors at Fox News itself. The footage has gotten barely any on-air attention.

This is all playing out amidst the ongoing saga of Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News for the network’s coverage of the 2020 election. Fox has been badly bruised by its promotion of Trump’s election fraud claims, which some of its most prominent opinion hosts privately questioned.

–John Pietro

Bill’s Kristol ball

Bill Kristol suggested that to get rid of Trump Republicans, it might be necessary for anti-Trumpers to be “with the Democrats for a while.”In a chat with Politico over the weekend, the Weekly Standard founder proposed a Gretchen Whitmer-Abigail Spanberger ticket, in what would be a perfect combination of TikTok mom-schmaltz and Beltway hackery.Luckily, though, Kristol’s prediction record is — to put it nicely — lacking.

–Cockburn