The Congressional Progressive Caucus recently released its agenda for 2025 and beyond. While the proposed trillions in new spending and crippling tax increases come as no surprise, the agenda is notable for its total rejection of the constitutional and free enterprise principles that enable prosperity and have made this country great. If enacted, this agenda would undo decades of economic progress and leave millions of Americans worse off. This post is the first in a series highlighting the most harmful proposals in the agenda.
Socialism, Not Progress
The name Progressive Caucus is a misnomer for a group of elected officials who embrace with open arms numerous policies of failed socialist states that are antithetical to actual human progress. While the word socialism has at times been overused, there is no descriptor more accurate to characterize an agenda that would put the federal government in the businesses of manufacturing drugs and providing consumers bank accounts while also paying people not to work. These explicit command and control industries are in addition to numerous other further government expansions into energy, broadband, health care, housing, and agriculture, among others.
Trillions in Tax Increases
A summary outlining the harms of the trillions of dollars in proposed tax increases could go on for nearly as many words—and with our luck, would result in them proposing a new by the word tax on blog posts—but it’s worth noting that taxes distort the free market and raise costs for consumers and business owners alike, leading to bloated government. Reducing tax rates is crucial for keeping the size of government under control and limiting the market distortion. In fact, higher personal and corporate income tax rates, like those proposed, are associated with lower rates of innovation, resulting in fewer patents issued and fewer inventors overall.
Here’s a sampling of (some of) the most egregious tax hikes in the caucus agenda:
- increase payroll taxes;
- new taxes on oil;
- increase taxes on stock buybacks;
- new taxes on billionaires;
- new taxes on the “ultra-wealthy”;
- higher capital gains taxes;
- raise the corporate tax rate;
- increase taxes on individuals;
- new tax on companies with “excessive” CEO-to-worker pay gaps.
The numerous proposed taxes would unquestionably make an already-complex tax system worse. The complexity of the existing system costs Americans hundreds of billions of dollars every year as citizens struggle to meet the tax burden imposed on them by the federal government, and these proposals would add to this burden. Discouraging entrepreneurship at a time when small businesses are struggling, is the opposite of what we need. On top of that, a lower corporate tax rate leads to increased investment, productivity gains, increased economic growth, output, and higher standards of living, but the Congressional socialists seem intent on abandoning economic growth in favor of more government reliance by raising rates.
Despite these new proposed taxes, it’s still unlikely they could generate nearly enough revenue to cover their radical expansion of government spending, meaning trillions of dollars more in new debt. With the numerous destructive regulations and other proposed policies causing further economic harm—as we will outline in future posts—the impact on the debt would likely be even worse.