As we never tire of saying, if liberals didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all. And the best exhibit of this right now is that if Biden and the Democrats sweep the election, one of the first things they will do is . . . deliver a big tax cut to the rich.
Don’t believe me? Then perhaps you’ll believe the . . . (checks notes) . . . New York Times:
The Tax Cut for the Rich That Democrats Love
Why are party leaders fighting to get rid of one surprisingly progressive element of the 2017 tax bill?
Democrats fighting — and fighting hard — for a $137 billion tax cut for the richest Americans? Mr. Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer don’t agree on everything, but on this specific issue they speak with one voice: the $10,000 cap on deductions for state and local tax (better known as the SALT deduction) must go.
The House of Representatives has already passed legislation removing the cap, allowing the amount of the deduction to rise. If the Senate turns blue in November, Democrats have promised to return to the issue. “I want to tell you this,” Senator Schumer said in July, “If I become majority leader, one of the first things I will do is we will eliminate” the SALT cap “forever.” It “will be dead, gone and buried.” . . .
By pushing for repeal of the cap, Democrats are leaving themselves wide open to criticisms of hypocrisy and opportunism. As Senator Michael Bennet, one of the few Democrats opposed to removing the SALT cap, pointed out to his Senate colleagues in October 2019: “We can say we are for a progressive tax code and for fighting inequality, or we can support the SALT deduction. But it is really hard to do both.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also voted against repeal.
Here is the Brookings Institution’s calculation of the distributional effects of restoring the SALT deduction, which is a subsidy for liberal high tax blue states:
