EDITORIAL: Biden the ‘unifier’ lurches further to the far left

We were assured during the presidential campaign that “moderate” Joe Biden would keep radical leftist Democrats in check if he won the Oval Office. Turns out it’s the other way around.

Mr. Biden on Wednesday announced his latest fiscal blowout, a $2.3 trillion “infrastructure” package that is nothing of the sort. The ink isn’t even dry on the free money the administration distributed as part of its $1.9 trillion COVID “relief” proposal, yet the president is already proposing to spend trillions more to expand the size and scope of the federal bureaucracy to levels heretofore considered unimaginable.

Bill Clinton famously noted back in the ’90s that the “era of big government is over.” Mr. Biden begs to differ.

According to the Wall Street Journal, less than 8 percent of the president’s proposed infrastructure agenda — $160 billion — actually has anything to do with improving roads, bridges, airports, seaports, etc. The rest is a hodgepodge of progressive initiatives involving social justice, green energy, “affordable” housing, child care and Big Labor paybacks.

At least this time, the White House acknowledges that it can’t simply rev up the printing presses to cover the massive costs of its profligacy. Instead, it will seek to impose the largest forced transfer of wealth from the American private sector to the Beltway in more than 50 years. The Biden tax plan includes higher corporate taxes and other financially punitive measures on corporations, income tax hikes for well-off wage earners and increased levies on capital gains and investment income.

The administration actively promotes the illusion that this cash grab targets only the “rich” and evil corporations. This is a fallacy. As Mr. Biden continues to embrace more of the hard left agenda, middle class Americans will eventually be on the menu, particularly when it comes to the costs of nationalizing health care. In addition, it’s apparently news to the Biden economic team that corporations don’t pay taxes. They pass them along to customers or adjust investment and wages accordingly.

“In other words, Mr. Biden’s corporate tax increases will hit the middle class hard,” the Journal noted this week, “in the value of their 401(k), the size of their pay packets and what they pay for goods and services.”

If nothing else, the Biden binge provides an opportunity for Republicans to reclaim the high ground on spending and taxes, thus appealing to moderate Americans who understand the dangers of crippling the nation’s market economy in favor of the type of centralized planning that proved such a colossal failure for much of the previous century. With “moderate” Joe Biden pitching to the extreme left, the 2022 campaign ads write themselves.