FACT SHEET: Senate Republicans’ Plan “To Raise Taxes On As Much As Half Of The Country.”

February 22, 2022
TO: Interested Parties
FR: Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
RE: FACT SHEET: Senate Republicans’ Plan “To Raise Taxes On As Much As Half Of The Country.”

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Today Senate Republicans unveiled their policy agenda for the midterm elections: “to raise taxes on as much as half of the country” – including seniors and working families.

Here are the facts:

• Senate Republicans will “raise taxes on as much as half of the country.” [Washington Post, 2/22/22]
  • Ramesh Ponnuru (National Review): Might also have been good to put out an agenda that did not include raising taxes on more than a hundred million Americans.
    
  • Bill Kristol (The Bulwark): The NRSC head is promising to raise income taxes on tens of millions of Americans, including retirees.
    
  • Sam Stein (POLITICO): ​​Tucked in Rick Scott’s 11 pt GOP plan is a call for a tax hike, however small, on the lowest incomed Americans.
    
• Senate Republicans will raise taxes on millions of “retirees who can’t earn an income because they are no longer in the work force.” [MSNBC, 2/22/22]
  
• Senate Republicans’ plan could raise taxes on roughly half of the more than 60 million Social Security beneficiaries. [Social Security Administration, February 2015]
  
• Senate Republicans’ would make it easier for “rich people to cheat on their taxes.” [Washington Post, 2/22/22]
  
• Senate Republicans’ plan “offers nothing on health care, child care, ideas on how to curb inflation.” [MSNBC, 2/22/22]
  
  • Washington Post (Opinion): Let’s start with what is not in there: any proposal to bring down inflation (which Republicans have been hollering about for months); to increase wages or reduce income inequality; to prepare workers for the 21st-century economy…and to increase school performance on basic subjects.

• When they were in charge, Senate Republicans gave tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy and corporations that ship jobs overseas “while overlooking working families”. [Economic Policy Institute, 12/17/19; New York Times, 1/8/18]

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